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CQKP.IGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE 

GREAT 
STEEL 
STRIKE 



AND ITS LESSONS 

By William Z. Foster 

The story of the steel workers' great fight for organization 
md recognition ; a book of the first importance in American 
abor history. Mr. Foster was the secretary and organizer 
}f the steel workers and responsible for the management of 
he strike throughout. 

'It sets forth as no other book has, and as no other writer could,*' says 
fohn A. Fitch in the Introduction, "the need of the workers in this great 
>asic industry for organization and the extreme difficulty of achieving this 
essential right. It shows also in the sanity, good temper and straightfor- 
ward speech of the author what sort of a leadership it is that the steel 
rompanies have decreed their workers shall not have/* 

B. W. HUEBSCH, Inc., Publisher, NEW YORK CITY 



X 



(SI 



THE GREAT STEEL STRIKE 
AND ITS LESSONS 




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THE 
GREAT STEEL STRIKE 

AND ITS LESSONS 



BY 

WILLIAM Z. FOSTER 



INTRODUCTION BY 
JOHN A. FITCH 






NEW YORK 

B. W. HUEBSCH, Inc. 

MCMXX 



COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY B. W. HUEB9CH, Inc. 
PRINTED IN U. S. A. 



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OCT 1 1 1920 
©CI.A576840 



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INTRODUCTION 

Half a million men are employed in the steel in- 
dustry of the United States. At a period in which 
eight hours is rapidly coming to be accepted as the 
standard length of the working day, the principal 
mills in this industry are operating on a 12-hour work 
schedule, and many of their workmen are employed 
seven days in every week. These half million men 
have, for the most part, no opportunity to discuss 
with their employers the conditions of their work. 
Not only are they denied the right of bargaining 
collectively over the terms of the labor contract, but 
if grievances arise in the course of their employment 
they have no right in any effective manner to take up 
the matter with their employer and secure an equit- 
able adjustment. 1 The right even of petition has 
been at times denied and, because of the organized 
strength of the steel companies and the disorganized 
weakness of the employees, could be denied at any 
time. 

The right of workers in this country to organize 

1 See for example Judge Gary's testimony before the Senate Com- 
mittee investigating the steel strike — October i, 1919, pp. 161-162, 
of committee hearings. He told of a strike which occurred because 
a grievance remained unadjusted after a committee of the workers 
had tried to take it up with the management. The president of 
the company involved was for crushing the strike without knowing 
what the grievance was or even of the existence of the committee. 

[v] 



and to bargain collectively is unquestioned. On 
every hand the workers are exercising this right in 
order to protect and advance their interests. In 
the steel mills not only is the ri'ght generally denied 
but the attempt to exercise it is punished by expulsion 
from the industry. Through a system of espionage 
that is thoroughgoing and effective the steel com- 
panies know which of their employees are attending 
union meetings, which of them are talking with or- 
ganizers. It is their practice to discharge such men 
and thus they nip in the bud any ordinary movement 
toward organization. 

Their power to prevent their employees from act- 
ing independently and in their own interest, extends 
even to the communities in which they live. In 
towns where the mayor's chair is occupied by com- 
pany officials or their relatives — as was the case 
during the 19 19 strike in Bethlehem, Duquesne, 
Clairton and elsewhere — orders may be issued de- 
nying to the workers the right to hold meetings for 
organizing purposes, or the police may be instructed 
to break them up. Elsewhere — as in Homestead, 
McKeesport, Monessen, Rankin and in Pittsburgh 
itself — the economic strength of the companies is so 
great as to secure the willing cooperation of officials 
or to compel owners of halls and vacant lots to re- 
fuse the use of their property for the holding of 
union meetings. 

One who has not seen with his own eyes the evi- 
dences of steel company control in the towns where 
their plants are located will have difficulty in com- 
prehending its scope and power. Social and reli- 
gious organizations are profoundly affected by it. 

[vi] 



In many a church during the recent strike, ministers 
and priests denounced the " agitators " and urged 
the workmen in their congregations to go back to 
the mills. Small business men accepted deputy sher- 
iffs' commissions, put revolvers in their belts and 
talked loudly about the merits of a firing squad as 
a remedy for industrial unrest. 

For twenty or mere years in the mill towns along 
the Monongahela — since 1892 in Homestead — the 
working men have lived in an atmosphere of espion- 
age and repression. The deadening influence of an 
overwhelming power, capable of crushing whatever 
does not bend to its will, has in these towns stifled 
individual initiative and robbed citizenship of its 
virility. 

The story of the most extensive and most coura- 
geous fight yet made to break this power and to set 
free the half million men of the steel mills is told 
within the pages of this book by one who was himself 
a leader in the fight. It is a story that is worth the 
telling, for it has been told before only in fragmentary 
bits and without the authority that comes from the 
pen of one of the chief actors in the struggle. 

Mr. Foster has performed a public service in set- 
ting down as he has the essential facts attendant upon 
the calling of the strike. The record of correspond- 
ence with Judge Gary and with President Wilson in- 
dicates clearly enough where responsibility for its oc- 
currence lies. It answers the question also of who 
it was that flouted the President — the strike com- 
mittee that refused to enter into a one sided truce, or 
Judge Gary, who would not accept Mr. Wilson's 
suggestion that he confer with a union committee, 

[vii] 



but who was willing to take advantage of the pro- 
posed truce to undermine and destroy the union. 

This thoughtful history, remarkably dispassionate 
upon the whole, considering the fact that the author 
was not only an actor in the events he describes but 
the storm center of a countrywide campaign of slan- 
derous falsehood, is an effective answer to those 
whose method of opposing the strike was to shout 
" Bolshevism " and " Revolution." Not thus are 
fomenters of revolution accustomed to write. It is 
this very quality which will make the book of great 
value both to the student and to the labor organizer. 
Never before has a leader in a great organizing cam- 
paign like the one preceding the steel strike sat down 
afterward to appraise so calmly the causes of defeat. 
Explanations of failure are common, usually in the 
form of " alibis." Mr. Foster has been willing to 
look the facts steadily in the face and his analysis 
of the causes of the loss of the strike — laying the 
responsibility for it at the doors of the unions them- 
selves — cannot fail to be helpful to every union 
leader, no matter what industry his union may rep- 
resent. On the other hand his account of such a feat 
as the maintenance of a commissary adequate to meet 
the needs of the strikers at a cost of $1.40 per man 
is suggestive and encouraging to the highest degree. 
This achievement must stand as a monument to the 
integrity and practical ability of the men who con- 
ducted the strike. 

It is with no purpose of underwriting every state- 
ment of fact or of making his own every theory ad- 
vanced in the book that the writer expresses his con- 
fidence in it. It is because the book as a whole is so 

[viii] 



well done and because the essential message that it 
conveys is so true, that it is a pleasure to write these 
words of introduction. Other books have been writ- 
ten about the steel industry. Some have concerned 
themselves with metallurgy, others with the com- 
mercial aspects of steel manufacture, and still others 
with certain phases of the labor problem. This 
book is different from all the others. It sets forth 
as. no other book has, and as no other writer could, 
the need of the workers in this great basic industry 
for organization, and the extreme difficulty of achiev- 
ing this essential right. It shows also in the sanity, 
good temper, and straightforward speech of the au- 
thor what sort of leadership it is that the steel com- 
panies have decreed their workers shall not have ! 

John A. Fitch. 
New York, June 4, IQ20. 



[ix] 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Introduction* ' . v 

CHAPTER 

I. The Present Situation i 



The strike 1 — " Victory" of the employers — Indus- 
trial democracy abroad, industrial serfdom at home 
— What the workers won — The outlook. 



II. A Generation of Defeat 8 

The urge for mastery — Democratic resistance — 
The Homestead strike — The strikes of 1901 and 
1909 — The Steel Trust victorious. 

III. The Giant Labor Awakes 16 

A bleak prospect — Hope springs eternal — A 
golden ch'ance — Disastrous delay — The new plan 
— A lost opportunity — The campaign begins — 
Gary fights back. 



IV. Flank Attacks 28 

A sea of troubles — The policy of encirclement — 
Taking the outposts' — Organizing methods — Fi- 
nancial systems — The question of morale — Johns- 
town. 



V. Breaking into Pittsburgh 50 

The flying squadron — Monessen — Donora — Mc- 
Keesport — Rankin — Braddock — Clairton — Home- 
stead — Duquesne — The results. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

VI. Storm Clouds Gather . . . ... 68 

Relief demanded — The Amalgamated Association 
moves — A general movement — The conference 
committee — Gompers' letter unanswered — The 
strike vote — Gary defends steel autocracy — Presi- 
dent Wilson acts in vain — The strike call. 

VII. The Storm Breaks 96 

The Steel Trust Army — Corrupt officialdom — 
Clairton — McKeesport — The strike — showing by 
districts — A treasonable act — Gary gets his an- 
swer. 

VIII. Garyism Rampant . . . . . . • .110 

The White Terror — Constitutional Rights denied 

— Unbreakable solidarity' — Father Kazincy — The 
Cossacks — Scientific barbarity — Prostituted courts 

— Servants rewarded. 

IX. Efforts at Settlement 140 

The National Industrial Conference — The Senate 
committee — The red book — The Margolis case — 
The Interchurch World Movement. 



e x - 



The Course of the Strike 162 

Pittsburgh district — The railroad men — Corrupt 
newspapers — Chicago district — Federal troops at 
Gary — Youngstown district — The Amalgamated 
Association — Cleveland — The Rod and Wire Mill 
strike — The Bethlehem plants — Buffalo and Lack- 
awanna — Wheeling and Steubenville — Pueblo — 
Johnstown — Mob rule — The end of the strike. 

XL National and Racial Elements . . . 194 

A modern Babel — Americans as skilled workers — 
Foreigners as unskilled workers — Language diffi- 
culties — The Negro in the strike — The race prob- 
lem. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XII. The Commissariat — The Strike Cost . 213 

The Relief organization — Rations — System of dis- 
tribution — Cost of Commissariat — Steel Strike Re- 
lief Fund — Cost of the strike to the workers, the 
employers, the public, the Labor movement. 

XIII. Past Mistakes and Future Problems . . 234 

Labor's lack of confidence — Inadequate efforts — 
Need of alliance with miners and railroaders — 
Radical leadership as a strike issue — Railroad 
shopmen, Boston police, miners, railroad brother- 
hood strikes — Defection of Amalgamated Associa- 
tion. 

yXIV. In Conclusion 255 

The point of view — Are trade unions revolution- 
ary? — Camouflage in social wars — Ruinous dual 
unionism — Radicals should strengthen trade unions 
—The English renaissance — Tom Mann's work. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Pennsylvania Law and Order . . ... . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGH 

National Committee Delegates 38 

Strike Ballot 78 

Cossacks in Action 122 

Mrs. Fannie Sellins, Trade Union Organizer . . . 148 
Steel Trust Newspaper Propaganda . . . . . .188 

John Fitzpatrick . . . .216 

A Group of Organizers . ., • M M r. ■•■ . . 244 



THE GREAT STEEL STRIKE 

AND ITS LESSONS 



THE 

GREAT STEEL STRIKE 

AND ITS LESSONS 
I 

THE PRESENT SITUATION 

THE STRIKE — " VICTORY " OF THE EMPLOYERS — 
INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY ABROAD, INDUSTRIAL 

SERFDOM AT HOME WHAT THE WORKERS 

WON THE OUTLOOK 

The great steel strike lasted three months and a 
half. Begun on September 22, 19 19, by 365,600 
men quitting their places in the iron and steel mills 
and blast furnaces in fifty cities of ten states, it 
ended on January 8, 1920, when the organizations 
affiliated in the National Committee for Organiz- 
ing Iron and Steel Workers voted to permit the 
100,000 or more men still on strike to return to work 
upon the best terms they could secure. 

The steel manufacturers " won " the strike. By 
forcing an unconditional surrender, they drove their 
men back to the old slavery. This they accom- 
plished in their wonted and time-honored way by 
carrying on a reign of terror that outraged every 
just conception of civil and human rights. In this 

[1] 



unholy task they were aided by a crawling, subservi- 
ent and lying press, which spewed forth its poison 
propaganda in their behalf; by selfish and indifferent 
local church movements, which had long since lost 
their Christian principles in an ignominious scramble 
for company favors; and by hordes of unscrupulous 
municipal, county, state and federal officials, whose 
eagerness to wear the steel collar w r as equalled only 
by their forgetfulness of their oaths of office. No 
suppression of free speech and free assembly, no 
wholesale clubbing, shooting and jailing of strikers 
and their families was too revolting for these Steel 
Trust * hangers-on to carry out with relish. With 
the notable exception of a few honorable and cour- 
ageous individuals here and there among these hos- 
tile elements, it was an alignment of the steel com- 
panies, the state, the courts, the local churches and 
the press against the steel workers. 

Upon the ending of the strike the steel workers 
got no direct concessions from their employers. 
Those who w r ere able to evade the bitter blacklist 
were compelled to surrender their union cards and 
to return to work under conditions that are a shame 
and a disgrace. They were driven back to the in- 

1 Throughout this book the term " Steel Trust " is used to indi- 
cate' the collectivity of the great steel companies. It is true that 
this is in contradiction to the common usage, which generally ap- 
plies the term to the United States Steel Corporation alone, but it 
is in harmony with the facts. All the big steel companies act to- 
gether upon all important matters confronting their industry. Be- 
yond question they are organized more or less secretly into a trust. 
This book recognizes this situation, hence the broad use of the 
term " Steel Trust." It is important to remember this explanation. 
Where the writer has in mind any one company that company is 
named. 

M 



famous peonage system with its twelve hour day, 
a system which American steel workers, of all those 
in the world, alone have to endure. In England, 
France, Italy and Germany, the steel workers enjoy 
the right of a voice in the control of their industry; 
they regularly barter and bargain with their em- 
ployers over the questions of hours, wages and work- 
ing conditions; they also have the eight hour day. 
One must come to America, the land of freedom, 
to find steel workers still economically disfranchised 
and compelled to work twelve hours a day. In this 
country alone the human rights of the steel workers 
are crushed under foot by the triumphant property 
rights of their employers. 

Who can uphold this indefensible position? 
Are not our deposits of coal and iron immeasurably 
greater, our mills more highly developed, our labor 
force more numerous and more skilled than those 
of any other country? Who then will venture to 
assert that American workingmen are not en- 
titled to exercise all the rights and privileges en- 
joyed by European workingmen? If the steel 
workers of England, or France, or Italy, or 
Germany can practice collective bargaining, why 
not the steel workers of America ? And why should 
the steel workers here have to work twelve hours 
daily when the eight hour day obtains abroad? 

There are a hundred good reasons why the prin- 
ciples of collective bargaining and the shorter work- 
day should prevail in the steel industry of America, 
and only one why they should not. This one reason 
is that the industry is hard and fast in the grip of 
absentee capitalists who take no part in production 

[3] 



and whose sole function is to seize by hook or crook 
the product of the industry and consume it. These 
parasites, in their voracious quest of profits, know 
neither pity nor responsibility. Their reckless, 
motto is " After us the deluge." They care less 
than naught for the rights and sufferings of the 
workers. Ignoring the inevitable weakening of 
patriotism of people living under miserable indus- 
trial conditions, they go their way, prostituting, 
strangling and dismembering our most cherished in- 
stitutions. And the worst of it is that in the big 
strike an ignorant public, miseducated by employers' 
propaganda sheets masquerading under the guise of 
newspapers, applauded them in their ruthless course. 
Blindly this public, setting itself up as the great 
arbiter of what is democratic and American, con- 
demned as bolshevistic and ruinous the demands of 
almost 400,000 steel workers for simple, funda- 
mental reforms, without which hardly a pretense of 
freedom is possible, and lauded as sturdy American- 
ism the desperate autocracy of the Steel Trust. All 
its guns were turned against the strikers. 

In this great struggle the mill owners may well 
claim the material victory; but with just as much 
right the workers can claim the moral victory. For 
the strike left in every aspiring breast a spark of 
hope which must burn on till it finally bursts into a 
flame of freedom-bringing revolt. For a genera- 
tion steel workers had been hopeless. Their slavery 
had overwhelmed them. The trade-union move- 
ment seemed weak, distant and incapable. The rot- 
tenness of steel districts precluded all thought of re- 
lief through political channels. The employers 

[4] 



seemed omnipotent. But the strike has changed all 
this. Like a flash the unions appeared upon the 
scene. They flourished and expanded in spite of all 
opposition. Then boldly they went to a death grap- 
ple with the erstwhile unchallenged employers. It is 
true they did not win, but they put up a fight which 
has won the steel workers' hearts. Their earnest 
struggle and the loyal support, by money and food, 
which they gave the strikers, have forever laid at 
rest the employers' arguments that the unions are 
cowardly, grafting bodies organized merely to rob 
and betray the workers. Even the densest of the 
strikers could see that the loss of the strike was due 
to insufficient preparation; that only a fraction of 
the power of unionism had been developed and that 
with better organization better results would be se- 
cured. And the outcome is that the steel workers 
have won a precious belief in the power of concerted 
action through the unions. They have discovered 
the Achilles' heel of their would-be masters. They 
now see the way out of their slavery. This is their 
tremendous victory. 

No less than the steel workers themselves, the 
whole trade-union movement won a great moral 
victory in the steel strike and the campaign that 
preceded it. This more than offsets the failure of 
the strike itself. The gain consists of a badly 
needed addition to the unions' thin store of self-con- 
fidence. To trade-union organizers the steel indus- 
try had long symbolized the impossible. Wave 
after wave of organizing effort they had sent against 
it; but their work had been as ineffectual as a summer 
sea lapping the base of Gibraltar, Pessimism re- 

[53 



garding its conquest for trade unionism was abysmal. 
But now all this is changed. The impossible has 
been accomplished. The steel workers were organ- 
ized in the face of all that the steel companies could 
do to prevent it. Thus a whole new vista of possi- 
bilities unfolds before the unions. Not only does 
the reorganization of the steel industry seem strictly 
feasible, but the whole conception that many of the 
basic industries are immune to trade unionism turns 
out to be an illusion. If the steel industry could be 
organized, so can any other in the country; for the 
worst of them presents hardly a fraction of the 
difficulties squarely vanquished in the steel industry. 
The mouth has been shut forever of that insuffer- 
able pest of the labor movement, the large body of 
ignorant, incompetent, short-sighted, visionless 
union men whose eternal song, when some important 
organizing project is afoot, is " It can't be done." 
After this experience in the steel industry the prob- 
lem of unionizing any industry resolves itself simply 
into selecting a capable organizer and giving him 
sufficient money and men to do the job. 

The ending of the strike by no means indicates 
the abandonment of the steel workers' battle for 
their rights. For a while, perhaps, their advance 
may be checked, while they are recovering from 
the effects of their great struggle. But it will not be 
long before they have another big movement under 
way. They feel but little defeated by the loss of 
the strike, and the trade unions as a whole feel even 
less so. Both have gained wonderful confidence in 
themselves and in each other during the fight. The 
unions will not desert the field and leave the workers 

[6] 



a prey to the demoralizing propaganda of the em- 
ployers, customary after lost strikes. On the con- 
trary they are keeping a large crew of organizers at 
work in an educational campaign, devised to main- 
tain and develop the confidence the steel workers 
have in themselves and the unions. Then, when the 
opportune time comes, which will be but shortly, 
the next big drive will be on. Mr. Gary and his 
associates may attempt to forestall the inevitable by 
the granting of fake eight hour days, paper increases 
in wages and hand-picked company unions, but it is 
safe to say that the steel workers will go on building 
up stronger and more aggressive combinations 
among themselves and with allied trades until they 
finally achieve industrial freedom. So long as any 
men undertake to oppress the steel workers and to 
squeeze returns from the industry without render- 
ing adequate service therefor, just that long must 
these men expect to be confronted by a progressively 
more militant and rebellious working force. The 
great steel strike of 19 19 will seem only a prelimi- 
nary skirmish when compared with the tremendous 
battles that are bound to come unless the enslaved 
steel workers are set free. 



[7] 



II 

A GENERATION OF DEFEAT 1 

THE URGE FOR MASTERY DEMOCRATIC RESIST- 
ANCE THE HOMESTEAD STRIKE THE STRIKES 

OF 1 90 1 AND I909 — THE STEEL TRUST VIC- 
TORIOUS 

The recent upheaval in the steel industry was but 
one link in a long chain of struggles, the latest battle 
in an industrial war for freedom which has raged 
almost since the inception of the industry. 

The steel manufacturers have always aggressively 
applied the ordinary, although unacknowledged, 
American business principles that our industries 
exist primarily to create huge profits for the for- 
tunate few who own them, and that if they have 
any other utility it is a matter of secondary impor- 
tance. The interests of society in the steel business 
they scoff at. And as for their own employees, they 
have never considered them better than so much 
necessary human machinery, to be bought in the 
market at the lowest possible price and otherwise 
handled in a thoroughly irresponsible manner. 
They clearly understand that if they are to carry out 
their policy of raw exploitation, the prime essential 

1 Students desiring a full account of the early struggles of the 
steel unions are advised to read Mr. John A. Fitch's splendid 
book, " The Steel Workers* 

[8] 



is that they keep their employees unorganized. 
Then, without let or hindrance, wages may be kept 
low, the work day made longer, speeding systems 
introduced, safety devices neglected, and the human 
side of the industry generally robbed and repressed 
in favor of its profit side; whereas, if the unions 
were allowed to come in, it would mean that every 
policy in the industry would first have to be con- 
sidered and judged with regard to its effects upon 
the men actually making steel and iron. It would 
mean that humanity must be emphasized at the ex- 
pense of misearned dividends. But this would never 
do. The mill owners are interested in profits, not 
in humanity. Hence, if they can prevent it, they 
will have no unions. Since the pioneer days of steel 
making their policy has tended powerfully on the one 
hand towards elevating the employers into a small 
group of enormously wealthy, idle, industrial auto- 
crats, and on the other towards depressing the 
workers into a huge army of ignorant, poverty- 
stricken, industrial serfs. The calamity of it is that 
this policy has worked out so well. 

Against this will-to-power of their employers the 
steel workers have fought long and valiantly. In 
the early days of the industry, when the combinations 
of capital were weak, the working force skilled, 
English-speaking and independent, the latter easily 
defended themselves and made substantial progress 
toward their own inevitable, even if unrecognized 
goal of industrial freedom; but in later years, with 
the growth of the gigantic United States Steel Cor- 
poration, the displacement of skilled labor by auto- 
matic machinery and the introduction of multitudes 

[9] 



of illiterate immigrants into the industry, their 
fight for their rights became a desperate and almost 
hopeless struggle. For the past thirty years they 
have suffered an unbroken series of defeats. Their 
one-time growing freedom has been crushed. 

At first the fight was easy, and by the later '8o's, 
grace to the activities of many unions, notable among 
which were the old Sons of Vulcan, the Knights of 
Labor and the Amalgamated Association of Iron, 
Steel and Tin Workers, considerable organization 
existed among the men employed in the iron and 
steel mills throughout the country. The Amalga- 
mated Association, the dominating body, enjoyed 
great prestige in the labor movement generally. It 
consisted almost entirely of highly skilled men and 
paid little or no attention to the unskilled workers. 
In the heyday of its strength, in 1891, it numbered 
about 24,000 members. Its stronghold was in the 
Pittsburgh district. Its citadel was Homestead. 
During the period of its greatest activity some 
measure of democracy prevailed in the industry, and 
prospects seemed bright for its extension. 

But about that time Andrew Carnegie, grown rich 
and powerful, began to chafe uneasily under the re- 
strictions placed upon his rapacity by his organized 
employees. He wanted a free hand and determined 
to get it. As the first step towards enshackling his 
workers he brought into his company that inveterate 
enemy of democracy in all its forms, Henry C. Frick. 
Then the two, Carnegie and Frick, neither of whom 
gave his workers as much consideration as the South- 
ern slave holder gave his bondmen — for chattel 
slaves were at least assured sufficient food, warm 

[10] 



clothes, a habitable home and medical attendance — 
began to war upon the union. They started the 
trouble in Homestead, where the big mills of the 
Carnegie Company are located. In 1889 they in- 
sisted that the men accept heavy reductions in wages, 
write their agreements to expire in the unfavorable 
winter season instead of in summer, and give up their 
union. The men refused, and after a short strike, 
got a favorable settlement. But Carnegie and 
Frick were not to be lightly turned from their pur- 
pose. When the contract in force expired, they re- 
newed their old demands, and thus precipitated the 
great Homestead strike. 

This famous strike attracted world-wide atten- 
tion, and well it might, for it marked a turning point 
in the industrial history of America. It began on 
June 23, 1892, and lasted until November 20 of the 
same year. Characterized by extreme bitterness 
and violence, it resulted in complete defeat for the 
men, not only in Homestead, but also in several 
other big mills in Pittsburgh and adjoining towns 
where the steel workers had struck in support of 
their besieged brothers in Homestead. This un- 
successful strike eliminated organized labor from the 
mills of the big Carnegie Company. It also dealt 
the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin 
Workers a blow from which it has not yet recovered. 
It ended the period of trade-union expansion in the 
steel industry and began an era of unrestricted labor 
control by the employers. At Homestead Carnegie 
and Frick stuck a knife deep into the vitals of the 
young democracy of the steel workers. 

Recuperating somewhat from the staggering de- 

en] 



feat at Homestead, the Amalgamated Association 
managed to retain a firm hold in the industry for a 
few years longer. Its next big setback, in 1901, was 
caused by the organization of the United States 
Steel Corporation. Foreseeing war from this mon- 
ster combination dominated by the hostile Carnegie 
Interests, the union, presided over at that time by 
Theodore J. Shaffer, decided to take time by the 
forelock and negotiate an agreement that would ex- 
tend its scope and give it a chance to live. But the 
plan failed; the anti-union tendencies of the employ- 
ers were too strong, and a strike resulted. At first 
the only companies affected were the American Tin 
Plate Company, the American Sheet Steel Company 
and the American Steel Hoop Company. Finally, 
however, all the organized men in all the mills of 
the United States Steel Corporation were called out, 
but to no avail; after a few weeks' struggle the 
strike was utterly lost. 

The failure of the 1901 strike broke the backbone 
of the Amalgamated Association. Still, with char- 
acteristic trade-union tenacity, it lingered along in 
a few of the Trust plants in the sheet and tin sec- 
tion of the industry. Its business relations with the 
companies at this stage of its decline, according to 
the testimony of its present President, M. F. Tighe, 
before the Senate Committee investigating the 19 19 
strike, consisted of " giving way to every request 
that was made by the companies when they insisted 
upon it." But even this humble and pliant attitude 
of the once powerful Amalgamated Association was 
intolerable to the haughty steel kings. They could 
not brook even the most shadowy opposition to their 

[12] 



industrial absolutism. Accordingly, early in the 
summer of 1909, they served notice upon the 
union men to accept a reduction in wages and 
give up their union. It was practically the same 
ultimatum delivered by Carnegie and Frick to the 
Homestead men twenty years before. With a last 
desperate rally the union met this latest attack upon 
its life. The ensuing strike lasted fourteen months. 
It was bitterly fought, but it went the way of all 
strikes in the steel industry since 1892. It was lost; 
and in consequence every trace of unionism was 
wiped out of the mills not only of the United States 
Steel Corporation, but of the big independent com- 
panies as well. 

Although the union was not finally crushed in the 
mills until the strike of 1909, the steel mill owners 
were for many years previous to that time in almost 
undisputed control of the situation. During a gen- 
eration, practically, they have worked their will un- 
hampered; and the results of their policy of unlim- 
ited exploitation are all too apparent. For them- 
selves they have taken untold millions of wealth from 
the industry; for the workers they have left barely 
enough to eke out an existence in the miserable, de- 
graded steel towns. 

At the outbreak of the World war the steel work- 
ers generally, with the exception of the laborers, 
who had secured a cent or two advance per hour, 
were making less wages than before the Home- 
stead strike. The constant increase in the cost of 
living in the intervening years had still further 
depressed their standards of life. Not a shred of 
benefit had they received from the tremendously 

[13] 



increased output of the industry. While the em- 
ployers lived in gorgeous palaces, the workers 
found themselves, for the most part, crowded 
like cattle into the filthy hovels that ordinarily con- 
stitute the greater part of the steel towns. Tuber- 
culosis ran riot among them; infant mortality was 
far above normal. Though several increases in 
wages were granted after the war began, these have 
been offset by the terrific rise in the cost of living. 
If the war has brought any betterment in the living 
conditions of the steel workers, it cannot be seen 
with the naked eye. 

The twelve hour day prevails for half of the men. 
One-fourth work seven days a week, with a twenty- 
four hour shift every two weeks. Their lives are 
one constant round of toil. They have no family 
life, no opportunity for education or even for recrea- 
tion; for their few hours of liberty are spoiled by 
the ever-present fatigue. Furthermore, working 
conditions in the mills are bad. The men are 
speeded up to such a degree that only the youngest 
and strongest can stand it. At forty the average 
steel worker is played out. The work, in itself ex- 
tremely dangerous, is made still more so by the em- 
ployers' failure to adopt the necessary safety de- 
vices. Many a man has gone to his death through 
the wanton neglect of the companies to provide safe- 
guarding appliances that they would have been com- 
pelled to install were the unions still in the plants. 1 

iThe practice of the different steel companies varies with respect 
to safety devices. Some of them are still in the dark ages that 
all were in a few years ago, with reckless disregard of human 
life. Others have made some progress. Of these the U. S. Steel 
Corporation is undoubtedly in the lead, for it has installed many 
safety appliances and has safety committees actively at work. At 

[14] 



Not a trace of industrial justice remains. The treat- 
ment of the men depends altogether upon the arbi- 
trary wills of the foremen and superintendents. A 
man may give faithful service in a plant for thirty 
years and then be discharged offhand, as many are, 
for some insignificant cause. He has no one to ap- 
peal to. His fellow workers, living in constant 
terror of discharge and the blacklist, dare not even 
listen to him, much less defend his cause. He must 
bow to the inevitable, even though it means industrial 
ruin for him and his family. 

Such deplorable conditions result naturally from a 
lack of unionism. It is expecting too much of human 
nature at this stage of its development to count on 
employers treating their employees fairly without 
some form of compulsion. Even in highly organ- 
ized industries the unions have to be constantly on 
guard to resist the never-ending encroachments of 
their employers, manifested at every conceivable 
point of attack. For the workers, indeed, eternal 
vigilance is the price of liberty. Hence nothing but 
degradation for them and autocracy for their em- 
ployers may be looked for in industries where they 
are systematically kept unorganized and thus in- 
capable of defending their rights, as is the case in 
the steel industry. This system of industrial serf- 
dom has served the steel barons well for a genera- 
tion. But it is one the steel workers will never ac- 
cept. Regardless of the cost they will rebel against 
it at every opportunity till they finally destroy it. 

best, however, steel making is an exceedingly dangerous industry 
and the risk is intensified by the great heat of the mills and the 
long hours of work — the twelve hour day and the seven day week 
— which lead inevitably to exhaustion. 

[15] 



Ill 

THE GIANT LABOR AWAKES 

A BLEAK PROSPECT — HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL — 

A GOLDEN CHANCE — DISASTROUS DELAY THE 

NEW PLAN A LOST OPPORTUNITY THE CAM- 
PAIGN BEGINS — GARY FIGHTS BACK 

From just previous to, until some time after the 
beginning of the world war the situation in the steel 
industry, from a trade-union point of view, was truly- 
discouraging. It seemed impossible for the workers 
to accomplish anything by organized effort. The 
big steel companies, by driving the Amalgamated As- 
sociation of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers from the 
mills, had built up a terrific reputation as union 
crushers. This was greatly enhanced by their com- 
plete defeat of Labor in the memorable strikes of the 
structural iron workers, the lake sailors, the iron 
miners, and the steel workers at McKees Rocks in 
1909, Bethlehem in 19 10 and Youngstown in 
19 15-16. It was still further enhanced by their 
blocking every attempt of the individual trades to re- 
establish themselves, and by the failure of the A. F. 
of L. steel campaign, inaugurated by the convention 
of 1909, to achieve even the slightest tangible re- 
sults. The endless round of defeat had reduced 
almost to zero the trade unions' confidence in their 

[16] 



ability to cope with the militant and rapacious steel 
manufacturers. 

But as the war wore on and the United States 
joined the general slaughter, the situation changed 
rapidly in favor of the unions. The demand for 
soldiers and munitions had made labor scarce; the 
Federal administration was friendly; the right to 
organize was freely conceded by the government and 
even insisted upon; the steel industry was the master- 
clock of the whole war program and had to be kept in 
operation at all costs; the workers were taking new 
heart and making demands — already they had en- 
gaged in big strike movements in the mills in 
Pittsburgh (Jones and Laughlin Company), Bethle- 
hem and Birmingham (U. S. Steel). The gods 
were indeed fighting on the side of Labor. It was 
an opportunity to organize the industry such as might 
never again occur. That the trade union movement 
did not embrace it sooner was a calamity. 

The writer was one of those who perceived the 
unparalleled opportunity. But being at that time 
Secretary-Treasurer of the committee organizing the 
packing industry I was unable to do anything sub- 
stantial in the steel situation until the handing down 
of Judge Alschuler's decision giving the packing 
house workers the eight hour day and other vital 
concessions enabled me to slacken my efforts in that 
important movement. Immediately thereafter, on 
April 7, 19 1 8, I presented a resolution to the Chi- 
cago Federation of Labor requesting the executive 
officers of the American Federation of Labor to call 
a general labor conference and to inaugurate thereat 
a national campaign to organize the steel workers. 

[17] 



The resolution was endorsed by twelve local unions 
in the steel industry. It was adopted unani- 
mously and forwarded to the A. F. of L. The latter 
took the matter up with the rapidly reviving Amal- 
gamated Association, and the affair was slowly wind- 
ing along to an eventual conference, with a loss of 
much precious time, when the resolution was re- 
submitted to the Chicago Federation of Labor, 
re-adopted and sent to the St. Paul convention of the 
A. F. of L., June 10-20, 191 8. It follows: 

RESOLUTION #29 

Whereas, the organization of the vast armies of 
wage-earners employed in the steel industries is vitally 
necessary to the further spread of industrial democracy 
in America, and 

Whereas, Organized Labor can accomplish this 
great task only by putting forth a tremendous effort; 
therefore, be it 

Resolved, that the executive officers of the A. F. of 
L. stand instructed to call a conference during this con- 
vention of delegates of all international unions whose 
interests are involved in the steel industries, and of all 
the State Federations and City Central bodies in the 
steel districts, for the purpose of uniting all these or- 
ganizations into one mighty drive to organize the steel 
plants of America. 

The resolution was adopted by unanimous vote. 
Accordingly, a nflmber of conferences were held 
during the convention, at which the proposed cam- 
paign was discussed and endorsed. The outcome 
was that provisions were made to have President 
Gompers call another conference, in Chicago thirty 
days later, of responsible union officials who would 

[18] 



come prepared to act in the name of their inter- 
national unions. This involved further waste of 
probably the most precious time for organizing work 
that Labor will ever have. 

From past events in the steel industry it was evi- 
dent that in the proposed campaign radical depart- 
ures would have to be made from the ordinary or- 
ganizing tactics. Without question the steel work- 
ers' unions have always lacked efficiency in their or- 
ganizing departments. This was a cardinal fail- 
ing of the Amalgamated Association and it contrib- 
uted as much, if not more than anything else to its 
downfall. If, when in its prime, this organization 
had shown sufficient organizing activity in the non- 
union mills, and especially by taking in the unskilled, 
it would have so intrenched itself that Carnegie and 
his henchman, Frick, never could have dislodged it. 
But, unfortunately, it undertook too much of its or- 
ganization work at the conference table and not 
enough at the mill gates. Consequently, more than 
once it found itself in deadly quarrels with the em- 
ployers over the unionization of certain mills, when 
a live organizer working among the non-union men 
involved would have solved the problem in a few 
weeks. 

Nor had the other unions claiming jurisdiction 
over men employed in the steel industry developed an 
organizing policy equal to the occasion. Their sys- 
tem of nibbling away, one craft at a time in individ- 
ual mills, was entirely out of place. Possibly effec- 
tive in some industries, it was worse than useless in 
the steel mills. Its unvarying failure served only 
to strengthen the mill owners and to further 

[19] 



discourage the mill workers and Organized Labor. 
fit is pure folly to organize one trade in one mill, or 
all trades in one mill, or even all trades in all the 
mills in one locality, when, at any time it sees fit to 
do so, the Steel Trust can defeat the movement by 
merely shutting down its mills in the affected dis- 
trict and transferring its work elsewhere, as it has 
done time and again. It was plain, therefore, that 
the proposed campaign would have to affect all the 
steel mills simultaneously. It would have to be 
national in scope and encompass every worker in i 
every mill, in every steel district in the United States. I 

The intention was to use the system so strikingly 
successful in the organization of the packing indus- 
try. The committee charged with organizing that 
industry, when it assembled, a year before, to begin 
the work, found three possible methods of procedure 
confronting it, each with its advocates present. It 
could go along on the old, discredited craft policy 
of each trade for itself and the devil take the hind- 
most; it might attempt to form an industrial union; 
or it could apply the principle of federating the 
trades, then making great headway on the railroads. 
The latter system was the one chosen as the best 
fitted to get results at this stage in the development 
of the unions and the packing industry. And the 
outcome proved the wisdom of the decision. In the 
steel campaign the unions were to be similarly linked 
together in an offensive and defensive alliance. 

But all this relates merely to the shell of the 
plan behind Resolution No. 29. Its breath of life 
was in its strategy; in the way the organization 
work was to be prosecuted. The best plans are 

[20] 



worthless unless properly executed. / The idea was 
to make a hurricane drive simultaneously in all the 
steel centers that would catch the workers' imagina- 
tion and sweep them into the unions en masse despite 
all opposition/ and thus to put Mr. Gary and his 
associates into such a predicament that they would 
have to grant the just demands of their men. It 
was intended that after the Chicago conference a 
dozen or more general organizers should be dis- 
patched immediately to the most important steel 
centers, to bring to the steel workers the first word 
of the big drive being made in their behalf, and to 
organize local committees to handle the detail work 
of organization. In the meantime the co-operating 
international unions were to recruit numbers of or- 
ganizers and to send them to join the forces already 
being developed everywhere by the general organ- 
izers. They should also assemble and pay in as 
quickly as possible their respective portions of the 
fund of it least $250,000 to be provided for the 
work. The essence of the plan was quick, energetic 
action. 

At the end of three or four weeks, when the or- 
ganizing forces were in good shape and the workers 
in the mills acquainted with what was afoot, the 
campaign would be opened with a rush. Great mass 
meetings, built up by extensive advertising, would 
be held everywhere at the same time throughout the 
steel industry. These were calculated to arouse 
hope and enthusiasm among the workers and to 
bring thousands of them :*nto the unions, regardless 
of any steps the mill owners might take to prevent 
it. After two or three meetings in each place, 

[21] 



the heavy stream of men pouring into the unions 
would be turned into a decisive flood by the election 
of committees to formulate the grievances of the 
men and present these to the employers. [The war 
was on; the continued operation of the steel industry 
was imperative; a strike was therefore out of the 
question; the steel manufacturers would have been 
compelled to yield to their workers, either directly , 
or through the instrumentality of the Government./ 
The trade unions would have been re-established in 
the steel industry, and along with them fair dealing 
and the beginnings of industrial democracy. 

The plan was not only a bold one, but also under 
the circumstances the logical and practical one. 
The course of events proved its feasibility. The 
contention that it involved taking unfair advantage 
of the steel manufacturers may be dismissed as incon- 
sequential. These gentlemen in their dealings with 
those who stand in their way do not even know the 
meaning of the word fairness. Their workers they 
shoot and starve into submission; their competitors 
they industrially strangle without ceremony; the 
public and the Government they exploit without 
stint or limit. The year before the campaign began, 
19 17, when the country was straining every nerve 
to develop and conserve its resources, the United 
States Steel Corporation alone, not to mention the 
many independents, after paying federal taxes and 
leaving out of account the vast sums that disap- 
peared in the obscure and mysterious company 
funds, unblushingly pocketed the fabulous profit of 
$253,608,200. 

It now remained to be seen how far the unions 



would sustain such a general and energetic campaign. 
The fateful conference met in the New Morrison 
Hotel, Chicago, August 1-2, 19 18. Samuel 
Gompers presided over its sessions. Representa- 
tives of fifteen international unions were present. 
These men showed their progressive spirit by meet- 
ing many difficult issues squarely with the proper 
solutions. They realized fully the need of co-opera- 
tion along industrial lines, from the men who dig 
the coal and iron ore to those who switch the finished 
products onto the main lines of the railroads. 
Plainly no trade felt able to cope single-handed with 
the Steel Trust; and joint action was decided upon 
almost without discussion. Likewise the conference 
saw the folly of trying to organize the steel industry 
with each of the score of unions demanding a differ- 
ent initiation fee. Therefore, after much stretch- 
ing of constitutions, the international unions, with the 
exception of the Bricklayers, Molders and Pattern- 
makers (who charged respectively $7.25, $5.00 and 
$5.00), agreed to a uniform initiation fee of three 
dollars, one dollar of which was to be used for de- 
fraying expenses of the national organization work. 
At the same meeting the National Committee for 
Organizing Iron and Steel Workers was formed. 
It was made to consist of one representative from 
each of the co-operating international unions. Its 
given function was to superintend the work of organ- 
ization. Its chairman had to be a representative 
of the A. F. of L. Mr. Gompers volunteered to fill 
this position; the writer was elected Secretary- 
Treasurer. Including later additions, the constitu- 
ent unions were as follows : 

M 



International Brotherhood of Blacksmiths, Drop- 
Forgers and Helpers 
Brotherhood of Boilermakers and Iron Ship Builders 

and Helpers of America 
United Brick and Clay Workers 
Bricklayers', Masons' and Plasterers' International 

Union of America 
International Association of Bridge, Structural and 

Ornamental Iron Workers 
Coopers' International Union of North America 
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers 
International Brotherhood of Foundry Employees 
International Hod Carriers', Building, and Common 

Laborers' Union of America 
Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin 

Workers 
International Association of Machinists 
International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter 

Workers 
United Mine Workers of America 
International Molders' Union of North America 
Patternmakers' League of North America 
United Association of Plumbers and Steam Fitters 
Quarry Workers' International Union of North Amer- 
ica 
Brotherhood Railway Carmen of America 
International Seamen's Union of America 
Amalgamated Sheet Metal Workers' International Al- 
liance 
International Brotherhood of Stationary Firemen and 

Oilers 
International Union of Steam and Operating Engi- 
neers 
International Brotherhood of Steamshovel and Dredge- 
men 
Switchmen's Union of North America. 

[24] 



This group of unions, lined up to do battle with 
the Steel Trust, represents the largest body of work- 
ers ever engaged in a joint movement in any coun- 
try. Their members number approximately 2,000,- 
000, and comprise about one-half of the entire 
American Federation of Labor. 

So far, so good. The conference had removed 
the barriers in the way of the campaign. But when 
it came to providing the large sums of money and 
the numerous crews of organizers that were immedi- 
ately and imperatively needed to insure success, it 
failed dismally. The internationals assessed them- 
selves only $100 apiece; they furnished only a cor- 
poral's guard of organizers to go ahead with the 
work; and future reinforcements looked remote. 

This was a facer. The original plan of a dash- 
ing offensive went to smash instanter, and with it, 
likewise, the opportunity to organize the steel in- 
dustry. The slender resources in hand at once 
made necessary a complete change of strategy. To 
undertake a national movement was out of the 
question. The work had to be confined to the 
Chicago district. This was admittedly going ac- 
cording to wrong principles. The steel industry is 
national in scope and should be handled as such. To 
operate in one district alone would expose that dis- 
trict to attacks, waste invaluable time and give the 
employers a chance to adopt counter measures 
against the whole campaign. It meant playing 
squarely into Mr. Gary's hands. But there was no 
other way out of the difficulty. 

The writer had hoped that the favorable indus- 
trial situation and the organization of the packing 



industry, which had long been considered hopeless, 
would have heartened the trade-union movement 
sufficiently for it to attack the steel problem with the 
required vigor and confidence. But such was not the 
case. The tradition of defeat in the steel industry 
was too strong, — thirty years of failure were not so 
easily forgotten. Lack of faith in themselves pre- 
vented the unions from pouring their resources into 
the campaign in its early, critical days. The work in 
the Chicago district was undertaken, nevertheless, 
with a determination to win the hearty support of 
Labor by giving an actual demonstration of the or- 
ganizability of the steel workers. 

During the first week of September the drive for 
members was opened in the Chicago district. Mon- 
ster meetings were held in South Chicago, Gary, 
Indiana Harbor and Joliet — all the points that the 
few organizers could cover. The inevitable hap- 
pened; eager for a chance to right their wrongs, the 
steel workers stormed into the unions. In Gary 
749 joined at the first meeting, Joliet enrolled 500, 
and other places did almost as well. It was a stam- 
pede — exactly what was counted upon by the 
movers of Resolution #29; And it could just as 
well have been on a national scale, had the interna- 
tional unions possessed sufficient self-confidence and 
given enough men and money to put the original 
plan into execution. In a few weeks the unions 
would have been everywhere firmly* intrenched ; and 
in a few more the entire steel industry would have 
been captured for trade unionism and justice. 

But now the folly of a one-district movement made 
itself evident. Up to this time the steel barons, 
like many union leaders, apparently had viewed the 

[26] 



campaign with a skeptical, " It can't be done " air. 
But events in Gary and elsewhere quickly dissipated 
their optimism. The movement was clearly danger- 
ous and required heroic treatment. The employers, 
therefore, applying Mr. Gary's famous " Give them 
an extra cup of rice " policy, ordered the basic eight 
hour day to go into effect on the first of October. 
This meant that the steel workers were to get there- 
after time and one half after eight hours, instead of 
straight time. It amounted to an increase of two 
hours pay per day but the actual working hours were 
not changed. It was a counter stroke which the 
national movement had been designed to forestall. 
Although this concession really spelled a great 
moral victory for the unions its practical effect was 
bad. Just a few months before the United States 
Steel Corporation had publicly announced that, come 
what might, there would be no basic eight hour day in 
the steel industry. Its sudden adoption, almost 
over night, therefore, was a testimonial to the power 
of the unions. But this the steel workers as a whole 
could not realize. In the Chicago district, where 
the campaign was on, they understood and gave the 
unions credit for the winning; but in other districts, 
where nothing had been done, naturally they believed 
it a gift from the companies. Had the work been 
going on everywhere when Mr. Gary attempted this 
move, the workers would have understood his mo- 
tives and joined the unions en masse, — the unions 
would have won hands down. But with opera- 
tions confined to one district he was able to steal the 
credit from the unions, partially satisfy his men, and 
strip the campaign of one of its principal issues. No 
doubt he thought he had dealt it a mortal blow. 

I»7l 



IV 
FLANK ATTACKS 

A SEA OF TROUBLES — THE POLICY OF ENCIRCLE- 
MENT TAKING THE OUTPOSTS — ORGANIZING 

METHODS — FINANCIAL SYSTEMS — THE QUES- 
TION OF MORALE — JOHNSTOWN 

Pittsburgh is the heart of America's steel industry. 
Its pre-eminence derives from its splendid location 
for steel making. It is situated at the point where 
the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers join their 
murky waters to form the Ohio, this providing ex- 
cellent water transportation. Immense deposits of 
coal surround it; the Great Lakes, the gateway to 
Minnesota's iron ore, are in easy reach; highly de- 
veloped railway facilities make the best markets 
convenient. In the city itself there are only a few 
of the larger steel mills; but at short distances along 
the banks of its three rivers, are many big steel 
producing centers, including Homestead, Braddock, 
Rankin, McKeesport, McKees Rocks, Duquesne, 
Clairton, Woodlawn, Donora, Midland, Vander- 
grift, Brackenridge, New Kensington, etc. Within 
a radius of seventy-five miles lie Johnstown, Youngs- 
town, Butler, Farrell, Sharon, New Castle, Wheel- 
ing, Mingo, Steubenville, Bellaire, Wierton and 

[28] 



various other important steel towns. The district 
contains from seventy to eighty per cent, of the coun- 
try's steel industry. The whole territory is an 
amazing and bewildering network of gigantic steel 
mills, blast furnaces and fabricating shops. 

It was into this industrial labyrinth, the den of the 
Steel Trust, that the National Committee for Or- 
ganizing Iron and Steel Workers moved its office on 
October i, 191 8, preparatory to beginning its work. 
Success in the Chicago district had made it impera- 
tive to overcome the original tactical blunder by ex- 
tending the campaign, just as quickly as possible, to 
a national scope. 

The outlook was most unpromising. Even under 
the best of circumstances the task of getting the 
enormous army of steel workers to thinking and act- 
ing together in terms of trade unionism would be 
tremendous. But the disastrous mistake of not 
starting the campaign soon enough and with the 
proper vigor multiplied the difficulties. Unfavor- 
able winter weather was approaching. This was 
complicated by the influenza epidemic, which for 
several weeks suspended all public gatherings. 
Then came the end of the war. The workers had 
also just been given the basic eight hour day. All 
these things tended to still them somewhat and to 
weaken their interest in organization. What was 
left of this interest was almost entirely wiped out 
when the mills, dependent as they were on war work, 
began to slacken production. The workers became 
obsessed with a fear of hard times, a timidity which 
was intensified by the steel companies' discharging 
every one suspected of union affiliations or sympa- 

[29] 



thies. And to cap the climax, the resources of the 
National Committee were still pitifully inadequate 
to the great task confronting it. 

But worst of all, the steel companies were now on 
the qui vive. The original plan had been conceived 
to take them by surprise, on the supposition that their 
supreme contempt for Labor and their conceit in 
their own power would blind them to the real force 
and extent of the movement until it was too late to 
take effective counteraction. And it would surely 
have worked out this way, had the program been 
followed. But now the advantage of surprise, 
vital in all wars, industrial or military, was lost to 
the unions. Wide awake and alarmed, the Steel 
Trust was prepared to fight to the last ditch. 

Things looked desperate. But there was no 
other course than to go ahead regardless of 
obstacles. The word failure was eliminated from 
the vocabulary of the National Committee. Prep- 
arations were made to begin operations in the towns 
close to Pittsburgh. But the Steel Trust was vigi- 
lant. It no longer placed any reliance upon its usual 
methods — its welfare, old age pension, employees' 
stockholding, wholesale discharge, or " extra cup of 
rice " policies — to hold its men in line, when a good 
fighting chance to win their rights presented itself to 
them. It had gained a wholesome respect for the 
movement and was taking no chances. It would cut 
off all communication between the organizers and 
the men. Consequently, its lackey-like mayors and 
burgesses in the threatened towns immediately held 
a meeting and decided that there would be no as- 
semblages of steel workers in the Monongahela val- 

[30] 



ley. In some places these officials, who for the most 
part are steel company employees, had the pliable 
local councils hurriedly adopt ordinances making it 
unlawful to hold public meetings without securing 
sanction; in other places they adopted the equally 
effective method of simply notifying the landlords 
that if they dared rent their halls to the American 
Federation of Labor they would have their " Sun- 
day Club " privileges stopped. In both cases the 
effect was the same — no meetings could be held. 
In the immediate Pittsburgh district there had been 
little enough free speech and free assembly for the 
trade unions before. Now it was abolished alto- 
gether. 

At this time the world war was still on ; our sol- 
diers were fighting in Europe to " make the world 
safe for democracy"; President Wilson was ideal- 
istically declaiming about " the new freedom"; 
while right here in our own country the trade unions, 
with 500,000 men in the service, were not even al- 
lowed to hold public meetings. It was a worse con- 
dition than kaiserism itself had ever set up. This 
is said advisedly, for the German workers were at 
least permitted to meet when and where they pleased. 
The worst they had to contend with was a policeman 
on their platform, who would jot down " seditious ' 
remarks and require the offenders to report next day 
to the police. I remember with what scorn I 
watched this system in Germany years ago, and how 
proud I felt to be an American. I was so sure that 
freedom of speech and assembly were fundamental 
institutions with us and that we would never tolerate 
such imposition. But now I have changed my 

[31] 



mind. In Pennsylvania, not to speak of other states, 
the workers enjoy few or no more rights than pre- 
vailed under the czars. They cannot hold meetings 
at all. So far are they below the status of pre-war 
Germans in this respect that the comparative free- 
dom of the latter seems almost like an unattainable 
ideal. And this deprival of rights is done in the 
name of law and patriotism. 

In the face of such suppression of constitutional 
rights and in the face of all the other staggering dif- 
ficulties it was clearly impossible for our scanty 
forces to capture Pittsburgh for unionism by a 
frontal attack. Therefore a system of flank attacks 
was decided upon. This resolved itself into a plan 
literally to surround the immediate Pittsburgh dis- 
trict with organized posts before attacking it. The 
outlying steel districts that dot the counties and 
states around Pittsburgh like minor forts about a 
great stronghold, were first to be won. Then the 
unions, with the added strength, were to make a big 
drive on the citadel. 

It was a far-fetched program when compared with 
the original ; but circumstances compelled it. An im- 
portant consideration in its exeeutic i was that it 
must not seem that the unions were abandoning 
Pittsburgh. That was the center of the battle line; 
the unions had attacked there, and now they must 
at least pretend to hold their ground until they were 
able to begin the real attack. The morale of the 
organizing force and the steel workers demanded 
this. So, all winter long mass meetings were held 
in the Pittsburgh Labor Temple and hundreds of 
thousands of leaflets were distributed in the neigh- 

[32] 



boring mills to prepare the ground for unionization 
in the spring. Besides, a lot of noise was made 
over the suppression of free speech and free assem- 
blage. Protest meetings were held, committees ap- 
pointed, investigations set afoot, politicians visited, 
and much other more or less useless, although spec- 
tacular, running around engaged in. These activi- 
ties did not cost much, and they camouflaged well 
the union program. 

But the actual fight was elsewhere. During the 
next several months the National Committee, with 
gradually increasing resources, set up substantial or- 
ganizations in steel towns all over the country ex- 
cept close in to Pittsburgh, including Youngstown, 
East Youngstown, Warren, Niles, Canton, Struthers, 
Hubbard, Massillon, Alliance, New Philadelphia, 
Sharon, Farrell, New Castle, Butler, Ellwood City, 
New Kensington, Leechburg, Apollo, Vandergrift, 
Brackenridge, Johnstown, Coatesville, Wheeling, 
Benwood, Bellaire, Steubenville, Mingo, Cleveland, 
Buffalo, Lackawanna, Pueblo, Birmingham, etc. 
Operations in the Chicago district were intensified 
and extended to take in Milwaukee, Kenosha, 
Waukegan, De Kalb, Peoria, Pullman, Hammond, 
East Chicago, etc., while in Bethlehem the National 
Committee amplified the work started a year before 
by the Machinists and Electrical Workers. 

Much of the success in these localities was due to 
the thoroughly systematic way in which the organiz- 
ing work was carried on. This merits a brief de- 
scription. There were two classes of organizers in 
the campaign, the floating and the stationary. Out- 
side of a few traveling foreign speakers, the float- 

[33] 



ing organizers were those sent in by the various in- 
ternational unions. They usually went about from 
point to point attending to their respective sections 
of the newly formed local unions, and giving such 
assistance to the general campaign as their other 
duties permitted. The stationary organizers con- 
sisted of A. F. of L. men, representatives of the 
United Mine Workers, and men hired directly by 
the National Committee. They acted as local or- 
ganizing secretaries, and were the backbone of the 
working force. The floating organizers were con- 
trolled mostly by their international unions; the 
stationary organizers worked wholly under the di- 
rection of the National Committee. 

Everywhere the organizing system used was the 
same. The local secretary was in full charge. He 
had an office, which served as general headquarters. 
He circulated the National Committee's weekly bul- 
letin, consisting of a short, trenchant trade-union 
argument in four languages. He built up the mass 
meetings, and controlled all applications for mem- 
bership. At these mass meetings and in the offices 
all trades were signed up indiscriminately upon a uni- 
form blank. But there was no " one big union '' 
formed. The signed applications were merely 
stacked away until there was a considerable num- 
ber. Then the representatives of all the trades 
were assembled and the applications distributed 
among them. Later these men set up their respec- 
tive unions. Finally, the new unions were drawn up 
locally into informal central bodies, known as Iron 
and Steel Workers' councils. These were invalu- 
able as they knit the movement together and 

[34] 



strengthened the weaker unions. They also incul- 
cated the indispensable conception of solidarity along 
industrial lines and prevented irresponsible strike 
action by over-zealous single trades. 

A highly important feature was the financial sys- 
tem. The handling of the funds is always a danger 
point in all working class movements. More than 
one strike and organizing campaign has been 
wrecked by loose money methods. The National 
Committee spared no pains to avoid this menace. 
The problem was an immense one, for there were 
from ioo to 125 organizers (which was what the 
crew finally amounted to) signing up steel workers 
by the thousands all over the country; but it was 
solved by the strict application of a few business 
principles. In the first place the local secretaries 
were definitely recognized as the men in charge and 
placed under heavy bonds. All the application 
blanks used by them were numbered serially. They 
alone were authorized to sign receipts * for initia- 
tion fees received. Should other organizers wish to 
enroll members, as often happened at the monster 
mass meetings, they were given and charged with 
so many receipts duly signed by the secretaries. 
Later on they were required to return these receipts 
or three dollars apiece for them. The effect of all 
this was to make one man, and him bonded, re- 
sponsible in each locality for all paper outstanding 
against the National Committee. This was abso- 

1 As a side light on organizing methods, it may be noted that the 
temporary receipts were red, white and blue cards. The patriotic 
foreigners were proud to carry these emblematic cards pending the 
time they got their regular cards. More than one man joined 
merely on that account. 

[35] 



lutely essential. No system was possible without 
this foundation. 

The next step was definitely to fasten responsibil- 
ity in the transfer of initiation fees from the local 
secretaries to the representatives of the various 
trade unions. To do so was most important. It 
was accomplished by requiring the local secretaries 
to exact from these men detailed receipts, specifying 
not only the amounts paid and the number of applica- 
tions turned over, but also the serial number of each 
application. Bulk transfer of applications was pro- 
hibited, there being no way to identify the paper so 
handled. 

The general effect of these regulations was to en- 
able the* National Committee almost instantly to 
trace any one of the thousands of applications con- 
tinually passing through the hands of its agents. 
For instance, a steel worker who had joined at an 
office or a mass meeting, hearing later of the forma- 
tion of his local union, would go to its meeting, pre- 
sent his receipt and ask for his union card. The 
secretary of the union would look up the applications 
which had been turned over to him. If he could 
not find one to correspond with the man's receipt he 
would take the matter up with the National Com- 
mittee's local secretary. The latter could not deny 
his own signature on the receipt; he would have to 
tell what became of the application and the fee. On 
looking up the matter he would find that he had 
turned them over to a certain representative. Nor 
could the latter deny his signature on the detailed 
receipt. He would have to make' good. 

To facilitate the work, district offices were estab- 

[36] 



lished in Chicago and Youngstown. Organizers 
and secretaries held district meetings weekly. Local 
secretaries at points contiguous to these centers re- 
ported to their respective district secretaries. All 
others dealt directly with the general office of the 
National Committee. 

It will be recalled that the co-operating unions, 
at the August 1-2 conference, agreed that the sum of 
one dollar should be deducted from each initiation 
fee for organization purposes. The collection of 
this money devolved upon the National Committee 
and presented considerable difficulty. It was solved 
by a system. The local secretaries, in turning over 
to the trades the applications signed up in their 
offices or at the mass meetings, held out one dollar 
apiece on them. For the applications secured at the 
meetings of the local unions they collected the dol- 
lars due with the assistance of blank forms sent to 
the unions.. Each week the local secretaries sent re- 
ports to the general office of the National Commit- 
tee, specifying in detail the number of members en- 
rolled and turned over to the various trades, and 
enclosing checks to cover the amounts on hand after 
local expenses were met. These reports were duly 
certified by the representatives of the organizations 
involved, who signed their names on them at the 
points where the reports referred to the number of 
members turned over to their respective bodies. 
The whole system worked well. 

Practical labor officials who have handled mass 
movements understand the great difficulties attend- 
ant upon the organization of large bodies of work- 
ingmen. In the steel campaign these were more 

[37] 



serious than ever before. The tremendous number 
of men involved; their unfamiliarity with the Eng- 
lish language and total lack of union experience; the 
wide scope of the operations ; the complications 
created by a score of international unions, each with 
its own corps of organizers, directly mainly from far- 
distant headquarters; the chronic lack of resources; 
and the need for quick action in the face of incessant 
attacks from the Steel Trust — all together pro- 
duced technical difficulties without precedent. But 
the foregoing systems went far to solve them. And 
into these systems the organizers and secretaries en- 
tered whole-heartedly. They realized that modern 
labor organizations cannot depend wholly upon 
idealism. They bore in mind that they were deal- 
ing with human beings and had to adopt sound 
principles of responsibility, standardization and gen- 
eral efficiency. 

But another factor in the success of the campaign 
possibly even more important than the systems em- 
ployed was the splendid morale of the organizers. 
A better, more loyal body of men was never gathered 
together upon this continent. They knew no such 
word as defeat. They pressed on with an irresist- 
ible assurance of victory born of their faith in the 
practicability of the theory upon which the cam- 
paign was worked out. 

The organization of workingmen into trade 
unions is a comparatively simple matter when it is 
properly handled. It depends almost entirely upon 
the honesty, intelligence, power and persistence of 
the organizing forces. If these factors are strongly 
present, employers can do little to stop the move- 

[38] 







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ment of their employees. This is because the hard 
industrial conditions powerfully predispose the 
workers to take up any movement offering reason- 
able prospects of bettering their miserable lot. All 
that union organizers have to do is to place before 
these psychologically ripe workers, with sufficient 
clarity and persistence, the splendid achievements 
of the trade-union movement, and be prepared with 
a comprehensive organization plan to take care of 
the members when they come. If this presentation 
of trade unionism is made in even half-decent 
fashion the workers can hardly fail to respond. It 
is largely a mechanical proposition. In view of its 
great wealth and latent power, it may be truthfully 
said that there isn't an industry in the country which 
the trade-union movement cannot organize any time 
it sees fit. The problem in any case is merely to de- 
velop the proper organizing crews and systems, and 
the freedom-hungry workers, skilled or unskilled, 
men or women, black or white, will react almost as 
naturally and inevitably as water runs down hill. 

This does not mean that there should be rosy-hued 
hopes held out to the workers and promises made to 
them of what the unions will get from the employers 
once they are established. On the contrary, one of 
the first principles of an efficient organizer is never, 
under any circumstances, to make promises to his 
men. From experience he has learned the extreme 
difficulty of making good such promises and also the 
destructive kick-back felt in case they are not ful- 
filled. The most he can do is to tell his men what 
has been done in other cases by organized working- 
men and assure them that if they will stand to- 

[39] 



gether the union will do its utmost to help them. 
Beyond this he will not venture. And this position 
will enable him to develop the legitimate hope, ideal- 
ism and enthusiasm which translates itself into sub- 
stantial trade-union structure. The wild stories of 
extravagant promises made to the steel workers dur- 
ing their organization are pure tommyrot, as every 
experienced union man knows. 

The practical effect of this theory is to throw on 
the union men the burden of responsibility for the un- 
organized condition of the industries. This is as 
it should be. In consequence, they tend to blame 
themselves rather than the unorganized men. In- 
stead of indulging in the customary futile lamenta- 
tions about the scab-like nature of the non-union 
man, " unorganizable industries, " the irresistible 
power of the employers, and similar illusions to 
which unionists are too prone, they seek the solution 
of the problem in improvements of their own primi- 
tive organization methods. 

This conception worked admirably in the steel 
campaign. It filled the organizers with unlimited 
confidence in their own power. They felt that they 
were the decisive factor in the situation. If they 
could but present their case strongly enough, and 
clearly enough to the steel workers, the latter would 
have to respond, and the steel barons would be un- 
able to prevent it. A check or a failure was but 
the signal for an overhauling of the tactics used, and 
a resumption of the attack with renewed vigor. At 
times it was almost laughable. With hardly an ex- 
ception, when the organizers went into a steel town 
to begin work, they would be met by the local union 

[40] 



men and solemnly assured that it was utterly im- 
possible to organize the steel mills in their town. 
11 But," the organizers would say, " we succeeded in 
organizing Gary and South Chicago and many 
other tough places." " Yes, we know that," would 
be the reply, " but conditions are altogether differ- 
ent here. These mills are absolutely impossible. 
We have worked on them for years and cannot 
make the slightest impression. They are full of 
scabs from all over the country. You will only 
waste your time by monkeying with them." This 
happened not in one place alone, but practically 
everywhere — illustrating the villainous reputation 
the steel companies had built up as union smashers. 
Side-stepping these pessimistic croakers, the or- 
ganizers would go on to their task with undiminished 
self-confidence and energy. The result was success 
everywhere. The National Committee can boast 
the proud record of never having set up its organiz- 
ing machinery in a steel town without ultimately put- 
ting substantial unions among the employees. It 
made little difference what the obstacles were; the 
chronic lack of funds; suppression of free speech and 
free assembly; raises in wages; multiplicity of races; 
mass picketing by bosses; wholesale discharge of 
union men; company unions; discouraging traditions 
of lost local strikes; or what not — in every case, 
whether the employers were indifferent or bitterly 
hostile, the result was the same, a healthy and rapid 
growth of the unions. The National Committee 
proved beyond peradventure of a doubt that the steel 
industry could be organized in spite of all the Steel 
Trust could do to prevent it. 

[41] 



Each town produced its own particular crop of 
problems. A chapter apiece would hardly suffice to 
describe the discouraging obstacles overcome in or- 
ganizing the many districts. But that would far 
outrun the limits of this volume. A few details 
about the work in Johnstown will suffice to indicate 
the tactics of the employers and the nature of the 
campaign generally. 

Johnstown is situated on the main line of the 
Pennsylvania railroad, seventy-five miles east of 
Pittsburgh. It is the home of the Cambria Steel 
Company, which employs normally from 15,000 to 
17,000 men in its enormous mills and mines. It 
is one of the most important steel centers in America. 

For sixty-six years the Cambria Company had 
reared its black stacks in the Conemaugh valley and 
ruled as autocratically as any mediaeval baron. It 
practically owned the district and the dwellers 
therein. It paid its workers less than almost any 
other steel company in Pennsylvania and was noted 
as one of the country's worst union-hating concerns. 
According to old residents, the only record of union- 
ism in its plants, prior to the National Committee 
campaign, was a strike in 1874 of the Sons of Vul- 
can, and a small movement a number of years later, 
in 1885, when a few men joined the Knights of La- 
bor and were summarily discharged. The Amalga- 
mated Association, even in its most militant days, 
was unable to get a grip in Johnstown. That town, 
for years, bore the evil reputation of being one 
where union organizers were met at the depot and 
given the alternative of leaving town or going to the 
lockup. 

[42] 



Into this industrial jail of a city the National Com- 
mittee went in the early winter of 191 8-19, at the 
invitation of local steel workers who had heard of 
the campaign. A. F. of L. organizer Thomas J. 
Conboy was placed in charge of the work. Im- 
mediately a strong organization spirit manifested it- 
self — the wrongs of two-thirds of a century would 
out. It was interesting to watch the counter-moves 
of the company. They were typical. At fitst the 
officials contented themselves by stationing num- 
bers of bosses and company detectives in front of the 
office and meeting halls to jot down the names of 
the men attending. But when this availed nothing, 
they took the next step by calling the live union 
spirits to the office and threatening them with dis- 
missal. This likewise failed to stem the tide of 
unionism, and then the company officials applied 
their most dreaded weapon, the power of discharge. 
This was a dangerous course; the reason they did not 
adopt it before was for fear of its producing exactly 
the revolt they were aiming to prevent. But, all 
else unavailing, they went to this extreme. 

Never was a policy of industrial frightfulness 
more diabolically conceived or more rigorously 
executed than that of the Cambria Steel Company. 
The men sacrificed were the Company's oldest and 
best employees. Men who had worked faithfully 
for ten, twenty or thirty years were discharged 
at a moment's notice. The plan was to pick out the 
men economically most helpless; men who were old 
and crippled, or who had large families dependent 
upon them, or homes half paid for, and make ex- 
amples of them to frighten the, rest. The case of 

[43] 



Wm. H. Seibert was typical; this man, a highly 
skilled mechanic, had worked for the Cambria Com- 
pany thirty years. He was deaf and dumb, and 
could neither read nor write. He was practically 
cut off from all communication with his fellow 
workers. Yet the company, with fiendish humor, 
discharged him for being a union agitator. For 
every worker, discharge by the Cambria Company 
meant leaving Johnstown, if he would again work at 
his trade; for most of them it brought the severest 
hardships, but for such as Seibert it spelled ruin. 
With their handicaps of age and infirmities, they 
could never hope to work in steel mills again. 

For months the Company continued these tactics. 1 
Hundreds of union men were thus victimized. The 
object was to strike terror to the hearts of all and 
make them bow again to the mastery of the Cam- 
bria Steel Company. But the terrorists overshot 
the mark. Human nature could not endure it. 
They goaded their workers to desperation and 
forced them to fight back, however unfavorable the 
circumstances. The National Committee met in 
Johnstown and ordered a ballot among the men. 
They voted overwhelmingly to strike. A committee 
went to see Mr. Slick, the head of the Company, who 
refused to meet it, stating that if the men had any 
grievances they could take them up through the 
company union. 

1 In its war against unionism the Cambria Steel Company held 
nothing sacred, not even the church. During the campaign the 
Reverend George Dono Brooks, pastor of the First Baptist Church 
of Johnstown, took an active part, speaking at many meetings and 
generally lending encouragement to the workers. For this crime 
the company punished him by disrupting his congregation and even- 
tually driving him from the city, penniless. 

[44] 



This company union played a large part in the 
drama of Johnstown. It was organized late in 
19 1 8 to forestall the trade unions. Such company 
unions are invariably mere auxiliaries to the com- 
panies' labor-crushing systems. They serve to de- 
lude the workers into believing they have some 
semblance of industrial democracy, and thus deter 
them from seeking the real thing. They consist 
merely of committees, made up for the most part 
of hand-picked bosses and " company suckers." 
There is no real organization of the workers. The 
men have no meetings off the property of the com- 
panies; they lack the advice of skilled trade union- 
ists; they have no funds or means to strike effec- 
tively; they are out of touch with the workers in 
other sections of the industry. Consequently they 
have neither opportunity to formulate their griev- 
ances, nor power to enforce their adjustment. And 
little good would it do them if they had, for the 
lickspittle committees are always careful to see that 
they handle no business unless it relates to " wel- 
fare " work or other comparatively insignificant mat- 
ters. 

Company unions are invariably contemptible. 
All of them are cursed with company dictation, and 
all of them lack the vivifying principles of demo- 
cratic control; but it is doubtful if a more degraded 
specimen can be found anywhere than that of the 
Cambria Steel Company. Without a murmur of 
protest it watched the company abolish the basic 
eight hour day late in 1918. Nor did it raise a 
finger to help the multitude of unfairly discharged 
union men. It habitually pigeonholed all real griev- 

[45] 



ances submitted to it. But what else could be ex- 
pected of a committee from which the company 
boldly discharged every man who dared say a word 
for the workers? 

By referring the men's grievances to the despised 
company union, Mr. Slick only added fuel to the fire. 
A strike loomed threateningly, but just as it was 
about to break, Mr. Slick lost his job, presumably 
because of his unsuccessful labor policy. He was 
supplanted by A. A. Corey, Jr., formerly general 
superintendent of the Homestead Steel Works. 
Thinking perhaps the change in personnel might in- 
volve a change in policy, the committee approached 
Mr. Corey. He, too, refused to meet with it, stat- 
ing publicly that the management would not deal 
with the representatives of outside organizations, 
but would take up the men's grievances, either 
through the company union, or " through any other 
accredited committee selected by the men in any way 
that is agreeable to them from among their own 
number." The last proposition was acceptable, and 
with joy the men held big open mass meetings of 
union and non-union men, and elected their com- 
mittee. But their joy was short-lived. Mr. Corey, 
unashamed, wrote the committee that he had acted 
hastily before, and said, " I have had no previous 
experience with arrangements in the nature of col- 
lective bargaining, but a careful survey of this plan 
(company union), which I have since had time to 
make, convinces me that it makes full and complete 
provision for every contingency which can arise be- 
tween the company and its employees." And then 
to make the men like this bitter medicine, the Com- 

[46] 



pany discharged an active member of the committee. 
All these events consumed many weeks and wore 
away the late winter and early spring months. 

Mr. Corey's double-dealing provoked a fresh 
strike crisis; but by heroic measures the organizers 
repressed it. At all times a strike in Johnstown 
alone against the united steel companies was con- 
sidered a move of desperation, a last resort to be 
undertaken only because nothing else could be done. 
But now relief was in sight. Spring was at hand and 
the national movement fast coming to a head. Its 
committees were knocking at the doors of the steel 
companies. The exposed and invaluable Johnstown 
position had to be held until this main army could 
come up and relieve it. So the Johnstown workers 
were told that they must refrain from counter-at- 
tacking, that they had to take all the blows heaped 
upon them and hold their ground at all costs. 

And right nobly they did it. In spite of the bit- 
terest hardships they built up and developed their 
organizations. In this they were unwittingly but 
powerfully aided by the company union. Several 
weeks before the big strike the officials took the 
hated general committee to Atlantic City, wined 
them and dined them and flattered them, as usual, 
and then had them adopt a set of resolutions con- 
demning the national movement of the steel workers 
and endorsing long hours, low wages and heavier 
production as the remedy for prevailing bad condi- 
tions. This betrayal was the last straw. It pro- 
voked intense resentment among the men. Whole 
battalions of them, the most skilled and difficult in 
the plant to organize, walked down and joined the 

[47] 



unions in protest. Almost 3000 enrolled the week 
after the resolutions were adopted. But it was al- 
ways thus. Every move that the Cambria made the 
unions turned to their advantage. They outgen- 
eraled the Company at every turn. 

It was almost pitiful to watch the later antics of 
the haughty and hitherto unchallenged Cambria 
Company, humbled in its own town by its own 
workers. A few weeks before Labor day the 
unions, innocently presuming the mills would be 
closed as usual on that day, decided to have a parade. 
Then the strategical experts of the Company became 
active. A warning was issued that every man 
marching in the parade would be summarily dis- 
charged. The unions would not brook this unwar- 
ranted and cold-blooded attack. They promptly 
sent word to the Company that if a single man was 
discharged the whole plant would be stopped the 
next day. It was a clear-cut issue, and Johnstown 
held its breath. When Labor day came the city 
saw the biggest demonstration in its history. Fifteen 
thousand organized workers defied their would-be 
masters and marched. The Company swiftly 
backed water. And the next day not a man was 
discharged. It was a victory well worth the heroic 
efforts and suffering of the previous eight months. 

When the great strike broke on September 22 the 
Johnstown workers went into the fight almost one 
hundred per cent, organized, and with about the 
same percentage of grievances. So few men were 
left in the plant that the Company had to ask the 
unions to give them help to shut down their fur- 
naces, and to keep the fire protection in operation. 

[48] 



All the power of the great corporation, which had 
made $30,000,000 the year before, could not fore- 
stall the unions. It had no arrow in its quiver that 
could strike fear to the hearts of its workers; no 
trick in its brain pan that could be substituted for 
industrial democracy. 

And Johnstown was only one point in the long 
battle line. Its experiences were but typical. Each 
steel town had its own bitter story of obstacles en- 
countered and overcome. Youngstown, Chicago, 
Bethlehem, Cleveland, Wheeling, Pueblo, Buffalo 
and many other districts, each put up a hard fight. 
But one by one, despite all barriers, steel towns all 
over the country were captured for unionism. 



[49] 



V 

BREAKING INTO PITTSBURGH 

THE FLYING SQUADRON — MQNESSEN — DONORA — 

MCKEESPORT — RANKIN BRADDOCK CLAIR- 

TON HOMESTEAD DUQUESNE THE RE- 
SULTS 

The time was now ripe for a great drive on Pitts- 
burgh, a district which had been the despair of 
unionism for a generation. The new strategy of the 
National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel 
Workers was succeeding. Pittsburgh had been sur- 
rounded by organized posts, established during the 
winter. The Chicago district had also been held. 
The committee's finances were improving. The 
crew of organizers was larger and more enthusiastic 
than ever. The mills were operating stronger and 
stronger. And spring was here. The movement 
was now ready for a tremendous effort to capture 
Pittsburgh, and thus overcome, as far as might be, 
the original mistake of not starting the campaign 
soon enough and everywhere at the same time. 
This done, it would put the work squarely upon the 
essential national basis. So the assault was 
ordered on the stronghold of the Steel Trust. 

First free speech and free assembly had to be 
established; for the towns about Pittsburgh were 

[50] 



still closed tight against the unions. During the 
winter incessant attempts had been made to break 
the embargo by political methods, but without avail. 
In vain a special convention of all the unions in 
Western Pennsylvania had appealed to the Governor 
for assistance. For a moment the federal Depart- 
ment of Labor displayed a languid interest and sent 
a dozen men to investigate conditions. But until 
this day their report has never appeared. In an- 
swer to inquiries, the Secretary of Labor is reported 
to have said that " its publication at this time would 
be inadvisable." That may be one reason, and an- 
other may be that the Department, in its eager co- 
operation with Attorney General Palmer, in deport- 
ing hundreds of workingmen without trials, is so 
busy that it hasn't time to attend to such trifles as 
the wholesale suppression of constitutional rights in 
Pennsylvania. 

But in seeking relief no appeal was made to the 
courts to set up the rights of the unions. This 
was for two reasons. First, it would involve such 
a loss of time that the chance to organize the steel 
workers would have passed long before any de- 
cision could be secured. Then, again, there was 
no faith that the courts of Pennsylvania would be 
just, and the National Committee had no money to 
carry the fight higher. The unions conceived their 
rights to speak and assemble freely too well estab- 
lished to necessitate court sanction at this late date. 
Hence, they determined to exercise them, peacefully 
and lawfully, and to take the consequences. At 
Atlantic City, where the A. F. of L. was in conven- 
tion, a dozen presidents of international unions in 

C5i] 



the steel campaign expressed their willingness to 
enter the steel districts, to speak on the streets, and 
to go to jail if necessary. 

To carry on the difficult and dangerous free speech 
fight, and to oversee generally the organization of 
the immediate Pittsburgh district, a special crew of 
organizers was formed. This was known as u The 
Flying Squadron," and was headed by J. L. Beaghen, 
A. F. of L. organizer and President of the Pitts- 
burgh Bricklayers' Union. The following brief ref- 
' erences to the fights in the various towns will illus- 
trate the forces at play and the methods employed. 

Monessen, forty miles from Pittsburgh on the 
Monongahela river, the home of the Pittsburgh 
Steel Company and several other large concerns, and 
notorious as the place where organizer Jeff. Pierce 
got his death blow in a previous campaign, was the 
first point of attack. Wm. Feeney, United Mine 
Workers' organizer and local secretary in charge of 
the district for the National Committee, superin- 
tended operations. Several months previously the 
Burgess of Monessen had flatly refused to allow 
him to hold any meetings in that town. So he was 
compelled to operate from Charleroi, several miles 
away. But as soon as spring peeped the question 
was opened again. He called a meeting to take 
place square in the streets of Monessen on April ist. 
The Burgess forbade it with flaming pronuncia- 
mentos and threatened dire consequences if it were 
held. But Feeney went ahead, and on the date set 
marched 10,000 union miners from the surrounding 
country into Monessen to protest the suppression of 

[52] 



free speech and free assembly. Mother Jones, 1 
James Maurer, President of the Pennsylvania Fed- 
eration of Labor, Philip Murray, President of 
District No. 5, U. M. W. A., Mr. Feeney, the 
writer and others spoke. The demonstration was a 
huge success. Public opinion was clearly on the side 
of the steel workers, and the Burgess had to recede 
from his dictatorial attitude and allow them to exer- 
cise their constitutional rights. This they hastened 
to do with gusto. The affair established the unions 
in the big mills of Monessen. 

In Donora, an important steel town a few miles 
down the river from Monessen, and part of organ- 
izer Feeney's district, the fight was not so easily won. 
The United States Constitution provides that not 
even Congress may pass laws abridging the rights 
of free speech and free assembly ; but inPjnwjlvttia^ 
the Constituti on is consid ered a sort of h umorous 
essay; hence the lickspittle Donora council, right in 
the face of the steel campaign, passed an ordinance 
forbidding public meetings without the sanction of 
the Burgess, which sanction, of course, the unions 
could not get. But nothing deterred, the indomit- 
able Feeney hired a couple of lots on the edge of the 
town and held meetings there. The company of- 
ficials left nothing undone to break up these gather- 
ings. They held band concerts and ball games at 

1 Throughout the latter part of the organizing campaign and the 
first two months of the strike, Mother Jones lent great assistance to 
the steel workers. This veteran organizer (she testified in court 
to being 89 years old) of the United Mine Workers labored daunt- 
lessly, going to jail and meeting the hardships and dangers of the 
work in a manner that would do credit to one half her age. 

[53] 



the same hour, and set dozens of their bosses and 
police to picket the meetings. But it was no use; 
the workers attended and joined the unions in droves. 

This lasted a couple of months. And all the 
while a local paper was villainously assailing Feeney. 
Finally, the steel company agents got the business 
men to sign an ultimatum to Feeney, demanding that 
he leave the district at once. Feeney took this mat- 
ter up with his miners, and they decided that not 
he, but they, would quit Donora. Organized 
solidly, they easily put a strict boycott on the town, 
and it was not long before the same business men, 
with their trade almost ruined, made a public apol- 
ogy to Feeney, and ousted their own officials who had 
been responsible for the attack. 

Naturally these events heartened the steel work- 
ers. They organized very rapidly, and soon had 
a majority of the men in the mills — a large plant 
of the American Steel and Wire Company. They 
also became a big factor in the local fraternal as- 
sociations, which controlled all the halls; and sud- 
denly the Lithuanian Society deposed its President, 
who was friendly to the steel company, and voted 
to give its hall to the unions, permits or no permits. 
In the face of this situation the Burgess reluctantly 
granted sanction for union meetings. And thus 
free speech and free assembly were established in 
the benighted town of Donora, and with them, al- 
most complete organization of the steel workers. 

But the heart of the conspiracy against free 
speech and free assembly was in McKeesport, 
twenty miles from Pittsburgh. When the organ- 
izers tried to hold meetings in that city they could 

[54] 



hire no halls without the Mayor's permission, and 
this the latter, George H. Lysle, stubbornly refused 
to give. He feared a revolution if the staid A. F. 
of L. unions were permitted to meet; but the Social- 
ist party and other radical organizations went ahead 
with their gatherings without opposition. The 
truth was that he knew the unions would organize 
the workers if they could but get their ear, and this 
he determined to prevent. Nor would he shift from 
his autocratic position. Appeals by the organizers 
to the Federal government, the Governor and the 
local city council were alike fruitless. No meetings 
could be held in McKeesport. And the officials of 
all the steel towns along the Monogahela river, 
drawing inspiration from the little despot, Lysle, 
took the same stand. Free speech and free assem- 
bly were stifled in the whole district. 

The Federal authorities being so active setting 
the outside world aright that they could find no 
time or occasion to correct the most glaring abuses 
at home, the unions resolved to attend to the free 
speech and free assembly matter themselves. 
Knowing that Lysle could knife the workers' 
rights only so long as he was allowed to work in 
the dark, they determined to drag him into the day- 
light and let the public judge of his deeds. They 
would hold meetings on the streets of McKeesport 
in spite of him; give him a few hundred test court 
cases to handle, and finally find out whether the 
A. F. of L. is entitled to the same rights as other 
organizations. 

The fight opened as soon as the weather per- 
mitted. May 1 8 was the date set for the first meet- 

[55] 



ing. The Mayor stormed and threatened all con- 
cerned with instant arrest; but the preparations 
went on just the same. When the fated day ar- 
rived thousands turned out to hear the speakers. 
But the Mayor, failing to defend his course, dared 
not molest the meeting. After this, meetings 
were held on the streets each Sunday afternoon, 
always in the face of the Mayor's threats, until 
eventually the latter, seeing that he was the laugh- 
ing stock of the city and that the street meetings 
were organizing hundreds of the workers, shame- 
facedly granted the following niggardly permit for 
meetings : 

CITY OF McKEESPORT. 

Department of Police. 

McKeesport, Pa., July 7, 19 19. 
Mr. Reddington, 
Chief of Police, 
McKeesport, Pa., 
Dear Sir: 

This is to certify that the McKeesport Council 
of Labor has permission to hold a mass meeting in 
Slavish Hall on White Street on July 8, 19 19. 

Permission is granted subject to the following con- 
ditions, and also subject to police regulation. 

(1st) That no speaker shall talk in any other 
languages, except the English language. 

(2nd) That a list of the speakers be submitted 
to the Mayor before the meeting is held. 

Very truly yours, 
|( Signed) Geo. H. Lysle 

Mayor 

[56] 



Disregarding the three provisions of this con- 
temptible document, the unions held their meetings 
under the auspices of the A. F. of L. (not of the 
McKeesport Council of Labor), had their speakers 
talk in whatever languages their hearers best under- 
stood, and submitted no list to Lysle. Then the 
big steel companies rushed to the aid of the hard- 
pressed Mayor. All the while they had discharged 
every man they could locate who had either joined 
the unions or expressed sympathy with them, but 
now they became more active. As each meeting 
was held they stationed about the hall doors 
(under the captaincy of Mr. William A. Cornelius, 
Manager of the National Tube Company's works) 
at least five hundred of their bosses, detectives, of- 
fice help, and u loyal " workers to intimidate the 
men who were entering. About three hundred more 
would be sent into the hall to disrupt the meetings- 
And woe to the man they recognized, for he was 
discharged the next morning. The organizers, run- 
ning the gauntlet of these Steel Trust gunmen, car- 
ried their very lives in their hands. 

Under these hard circumstances few steel work- 
ers dared to go to the meetings or to the union 
headquarters. But the organizations grew rapidly 
nevertheless. Every discharged man became a vol- 
unteer organizer and busied himself getting his 
friends to enroll. A favorite trick to escape the 
espionage was to get a group of men, from a dozen 
to fifty, to meet quietly in one of the homes, fill out 
their applications, and send them by a sister or wife 
to the union headquarters — the detectives stationed 
outside naturally not knowing the women. Condi- 

[57] 



tions in the local mills were so bad that not even the 
most desperate employers' tactics could stop the 
progress of the unions. McKeesport quickly be- 
came one of the strong organization points on the 
river. 

Sweeping onward through the Pittsburgh dis- 
trict, the unions gained great headway by the col- 
lapse of the petty Czar of McKeesport, for all the 
little nabobs in the adjoining steel towns felt the 
effects of his defeat. Rankin fell without a blow. 
A few months before the hall had been closed there 
by the local board of health, when the Burgess re- 
fused to act against the unions. But now no ob- 
jections were made to the meetings. Braddock also 
capitulated easily. At a street meeting held in the 
middle of town against the Burgess' orders, organ- 
izers J. L. Beaghen, R. L. Hall, J. C. Boyle, J. B. 
Gent and the writer were arrested. The Burgess, 
however, not wishing to meet the issue, found it 
convenient to leave town, and the Acting Burgess, 
declaring in open court that he would not " do the 
dirty work of the Burgess," postponed the hearings 
indefinitely. That settled Braddock. 

Burgess Williams of North Clairton, chief of the 
Carnegie mill police at that point, swore dire ven- 
geance against the free speech fighters should they 
come to his town. But the National Committee, 
choosing a lot owned by its local secretary on the 
main street of North Clairton, called a meeting there 
one bright Sunday afternoon. But hardly had 
it started when, with a great flourish of clubs, the 
police broke up the gathering and arrested organ- 
izers J. G. Brown, J. Manley, A. A. Lassich, P. H. 

[58] 



Brogan, J. L. Beaghen, R. L. Hall, and the writer. 
Later all were fined for holding a meeting on their 
own property. But the Burgess, learning that the 
speaker for the following Sunday was Mother Jones 
of the Miners' Union, and that public sentiment was 
overwhelmingly against him, decided not to fight. 
Instead he provided a place on the public commons 
for open air meetings. The contest resulted in al- 
most all of the local steel workers joining the unions 
immediately. 

In Homestead, however, that sacred shrine of 
Labor, the unions had to put up a harder fight. 
The Burgess there, one P. H. McGuire, is a veteran 
of the great Homestead strike, and for many years 
afterwards led the local fight against the Carnegie 
Steel Company. But he has now fully recovered 
from his unionism. He has made peace with the 
enemy. It was in the early winter of 191 8 that the 
unions first tried to hold meetings in his town. But 
they were careful to make tentative arrangements 
for a hall before asking a permit from McGuire. 
The latter stated flatly that there would be no 
union meetings in Homestead, saying no halls could 
be secured. " But," said the organizers, " we have 
already engaged a hall." The next day the rent 
money was returned with the explanation that a mis- 
take had been made. Later the unions managed to 
sneak by the guard of the ex-union man Burgess and 
hold a meeting or two — said to be the first since 
the Homestead strike, twenty-six years before — but 
nothing substantial could be done, and the fight was 
called off for the winter. 

During the big spring drive on Pittsburgh the 

[59] 



Flying Squadron turned its attention to Homestead 
as soon as the McKeesport and many other pressing 
situations permitted. Mass meetings were held on 
the main streets. At first the Burgess, with a 
weather eye on McKeesport, did not molest these; 
but when he saw the tremendous interest the steel 
workers showed and the rapidity with which they 
were joining the unions, he attempted to break up 
the meetings by arresting two of the organizers, 
J. L. Beaghen and myself. At the trial McGuire, 
as magistrate, was shown that his ordinance did not 
cover street meetings. " But," said he, u it's the 
best we've got, and it will have to do." He fined 
the defendants, and a day or two later had an ordi- 
nance adopted to his liking. Such trifles don't worry 
the executives in steel towns. 

But such an enormous crowd assembled to witness 
the next street meeting that McGuire had to agree 
to permit hall meetings. No sooner were they at- 
tempted however, than he broke his agreement. 
He would allow no languages other than English 
to be spoken — the object being to prevent the for- 
eign workers from understanding what was going on. 
Of course all other organizations in Homestead 
could use what tongues they pleased. The unions 
balked, with the result that more street meetings 
were held and Mother Jones, J. G. Brown, R. W. 
Reilly and J. L. Beaghen were arrested. Public 
indignation was intense; thousands marched the 
streets in protest; the unions grew like beanstalks. 
And so the affair went on till the great strike broke 
on September 22. 

That curse of the campaign since its inception, 

[60] 



the lack of resources, bore down heavily on the work 
in the crucial summer months just before the strike. 
At least one hundred more men should have been put 
in the field to take advantage of the unparalleled 
opportunity. But the National Committee could 
not beg, borrow or steal them. The organizers in 
the various localities fairly shrieked for help, but 
in vain. Especially was the need keenly felt in the 
big drive on Pittsburgh. Instead of eight or ten 
men, which was all that the Flying Squadron could 
muster, there ought to have been at least fifty men 
delegated to the huge task of capturing the score 
of hard-baked steel towns on Pittsburgh's three 
rivers. The consequence was that the work every- 
where had to be skimped, with disastrous effects 
later on in the strike. In those towns where the 
unions did get started lack of help prevented their 
taking full advantage of the situation. And then 
some towns had to be passed up altogether, although 
the men were infected with the general fever for 
organization and were calling for organizers. It 
was impossible to send any one to either Woodlawn 
or Midland, both very important steel towns. Even 
the strategic city of Duquesne, with its enormous 
mills and blast furnaces, could not be started until 
three weeks before the strike. 

Duquesne is just across the river from McKees- 
port and only four miles from Homestead. It gave 
the organizers a hot reception. Its Mayor, James 
S. Crawford, is President of the First National 
Bank. His brother is President of the Port Vue 
Tinplate Company. Besides being Mayor, Mr. 
Crawford is city Commissioner, President of the city 

[61] 



council, Director of Public Safety, and Magistrate. 
He makes the laws, executes them and punishes the 
violators. He is a true type of Pennsylvania steel 
town petty Kaiser and exercises his manifold powers 
accordingly. 

So eager was the Mayor, popularly known as 
" Toad " Crawford, to give the world a demonstra- 
tion of Steel Trust Americanism that he challenged 
the organizers to come to his town. He even of- 
fered to meet in personal combat one of the men 
in charge of the campaign. Of course he insultingly 
refused to grant permits for meetings. The organ- 
izers, who could not hire an office in the place, so 
completely were the property owners dominated by 
the steel companies, managed to lease a couple of 
lots in an obscure part of town. But when they at- 
tempted to hold a meeting there Mr. Crawford 
jailed three of them, J. L. Beaghen, J. McCaig, and 
J. G. Sause. The next day he fined them each $100 
and costs. 

Rabbi Wise of New York was the speaker billed 
for the following Sunday. But the Steel Trust- 
Mayor forbade his meeting. And when it was pro- 
posed to have Frank Morrison, with whom Craw- 
ford boasted a slight acquaintance, confer with him 
about the situation, he declared, " It won't do you 
any good. Jesus Christ himself could not speak 
in Duquesne for the A. F. of L! " It so happened 
that Rabbi Wise was unable to come to Pennsyl- 
vania for his scheduled lectures on behalf of the steel 
workers, and the organizers held the Duquesne meet- 
ing themselves. Crawford had his whole police 
force on hand and immediately arrested the speak- 

[62] 



ers, Mother Jones, J. L. Beaghen and the writer. 
Forty-four steel workers, all the jail would hold, 
were arrested also, foi no other reason than attend- 
ing the meeting. Organizer J. M. Patterson, who 
had nothing to do with the gathering, was thrown 
into jail merely for trying to find out what bail we 
were held for. The next day the organizers were 
each fined $100 and costs, and the rest from $25 
to $50 apiece. 1 In sentencing Mr. Beaghen, Mayor 
Crawford declared that nothing would be more 
pleasurable than to give him 99 years, and then be 
on hand when he got out to give him 99 more. 

The Mayor was going it strong; but he was rid- 
ing fast to a hard fall. The unions were planning 
to bring to Duquesne some of the most prominent 
men in the United States and to give Crawford the 
fight of his life, when the outbreak of the great 
strike swamped them with work and compelled them 
to turn their attention elsewhere. 2 

Whatever its general disadvantages, in some re- 

1 Relative to this meeting there occurs the following dialogue on 
page 508 of the report on the Senate Committee's Hearings on the 
Steel Strike: 

Senator Sterling. " Was Mr. Foster here prior to the strike ? " 

Mr. Diehl (Gen. Manager Duquesne Works, Carnegie Steel Co.). 
" Yes ; he was here trying to hold a meeting, but the meeting was 
not held." 

The Chairman. "What happened to the meeting?" 

Mr. Diehl. " Well, we simply prohibited it." 

And naturally so. Mr. Diehl and other company officials shut off 
meetings in the halls and on the lots of their towns just as readily 
as they would have done had attempts been made to hold them in 
the mill yards. 

2 Now that the strike is over and spring is again at hand, the 
unions have resumed the battle for free speech and assembly in 
Duquesne and promise to fight it to a conclusion. 

[63] 



spects, at least, the free speech fight was very good 
for the unions. For one thing, it served wonder- 
fully well to infuse the necessary hope and confidence 
into the steel workers. So tremendous had been the 
manifestations of the Steel Trust — its long record 
of victory over the trade unions, its vast wealth and 
undisputed political supremacy, its enormous mills 
and furnaces — so tremendous had been all these 
influences that they had overcome the individual 
workers with a profound sense of insignificance 
and helplessness, and practically destroyed all capac- 
ity for spontaneous action. What the steel men 
needed to rouse them from their lethargy was a dem- 
onstration of power from outside, a tangible sign 
that there was some institution through which they 
could help themselves. Throughout the campaign 
this consideration was borne in mind, and bands and 
other spectacular methods of advertising were used 
to develop among the steel workers a feeling of the 
greatness and power of the unions. Nor were these 
methods unsuccessful. Most effective of all, how- 
ever, was the free speech fight in Pennsylvania. 
That gave the unions a golden opportunity to de- 
feat the Steel Trust so easily and spectacularly that 
the steel workers couldn't help but be encouraged 
thereby. They simply had to cast in their lot with 
a movement able to defeat so handily their auto- 
cratic masters. And once they came in they felt the 
utmost confidence in their leaders, the men they had 
seen jailed time and again for fighting their battle. 
In consequence of The Flying Squadron's heroic 
battles in the immediate Pittsburgh district the whole 
campaign was put practically upon a national basis, 

[6 4 ] 



where it should have been at the start. Almost 
every steel centre in America was being organized 
simultaneously. Members were streaming into the 
co-operating unions by thousands. The entire 
steel industry was on the move. Perhaps it may be 
fitting to introduce at this point an official digest of 
the general report of the number of men organized 
by the National Committee during the whole cam- 
paign. The report covers the period up to Janu- 
ary 31, 1920, but almost all of the men were enrolled 
before the strike started on September 22. 

GENERAL REPORT 
on 

250,000 members enrolled by the National Committee for 

Organizing Iron and Steel Workers during the 

American Federation of Labor Organizing 

Campaign in the Steel Industry, from 

August 1, 19 1 8, until January 

31, 1920. 

By Localities By Trades 

South Chicago 6,616 Blacksmiths 5,699 

Chicago Heights 569 Boilermakers 2,097 

Misc. Chicago Dist. .... 3,871 Brick & Clay Workers.. 187 

Pittsburgh 8,970 Bricklayers 581 

Johnstown 11,846 Coopers 138 

Butler 2,519 Electrical Workers 8,481 

Monessen & Donora .... 8,665 Foundry Employees 2,406 

New Castle 2,710 Hod Carriers 2,335 

Homestead 3,571 Iron, Steel & Tin Wkrs. . 70,026 

Braddock & Rankin 4,044 Iron Workers 5,829 

Clairton 2,970 Machinists 12,406 

McKeesport 3,963 Metal Polishers 349 

Gary 7,092 M. M. & Smelter Wkrs. 15,223 

Indiana Harbor 4,654 Mine Workers i,53 8 

Joliet 3,497 Moulders 1,382 

Milwaukee 681 Pattern Makers 

Waukegan 1,212 Plumbers 1,369 

[65] 



By Localities By Trades 

DeKalb 332 Quarry Workers 725 

Aurora 242 Railway Carmen 5*045 

Pullman 4,073 Seamen 

Kenosha 585 Sheet Metal Workers ... 377 

Hammond 1,102 Stationary Engineers ... 2,194 

Wheeling Dist 5,028 Stationary Firemen 5,321 

Farrell & Sharon 3,794 Steam Shovelmen 2 

Cleveland 17,305 Switchmen 440 

Sparrows Point 93 Unclassified 12,552 

Brackenridge & Natrona 2,110 

East Pittsburgh 146 

East Liverpool 50 

Warren & Niles 474 

Minnesota Dist 185 

Pueblo 3,113 

Coatesville 828 

Steubenville Dist 4,108 

Birmingham Dist *A7° 

Canton & Massillon ..... 5,705 

Vandergrift 1,986 

Buffalo & Lackawanna.. 6,179 

Youngstown 19,040 

Peoria 984 

Decatur 320 



Total by Localities. . .156,702 Total by Trades 156,702 

This report includes only those members actually 
signed up by the National Committee for Organizing 
Iron and Steel Workers, and from whose initiation 
fees $1.00 apiece was deducted and forwarded to the 
general office of the National Committee. It repre- 
sents approximately 50 to 60 per cent, of the total num- 
ber of steel workers organized during the campaign, 
and is minimum in every respect. 

The report does not include any of the many thou- 
sands of men signed up at Bethlehem, Steelton, Read- 
ing, Apollo, New Kensington, Leechburg and many 
minor points which felt the force of the drive but where 

[66] 



the National Committee made no deductions upon initi- 
ation fees. In Gary, Joliet, Indiana Harbor, South 
Chicago and other Chicago District points the National 
Committee ceased collecting on initiation fees early in 
19 19, hence this report makes no showing of the thou- 
sands of men signed up in that territory during the last 
few months of the campaign. Likewise, at Coatesville 
and Sparrows* Point, during only a short space of the 
campaign were deductions made for the National Com- 
mittee. Many thousands more men were signed up 
directly by the multitude of local unions in the steel in- 
dustry, that were not reported to the National Com- 
mittee. These do not show in this calculation. Nor 
do the great number of ex-soldiers who were taken into 
the unions free of initiation fees — in Johnstown alone 
1300 ex-soldier steel workers joined the unions under 
this arrangement. Of course no accounting is here in- 
cluded for the army of workers in outside industries 
who became organized as a result of the tremendous 
impulse given by the steel campaign. 

In view of these exceptions it may be conservatively 
estimated that well over 250,000 steel workers joined 
the unions notwithstanding the opposition of the Steel 
Trust, which discharged thousands of its workers, 
completely suppressed free speech and free assembly in 
Pennsylvania and used every known tactic to prevent 
the organization of its employees. 

Wm. Z. Foster, 
Secretary-Treasurer 
National Committee for Organizing 
Certified by Iron & Steel Workers. 

Enoch Martin 
Auditor, District No. 12 

United Mine Workers of America. 



[67] 



VI 
STORM CLOUDS GATHER 

RELIEF DEMANDED THE AMALGAMATED ASSOCIA- 
TION MOVES A GENERAL MOVEMENT THE 

CONFERENCE COMMITTEE GOMPERS' LETTER 

UNANSWERED THE STRIKE VOTE GARY DE- 
FENDS STEEL AUTOCRACY PRESIDENT WILSON 

ACTS IN VAIN THE STRIKE CALL 

Surging forward to the accomplishment of the " im- 
possible, " the organization of the steel industry, the 
twenty-four co-operating international unions found 
themselves in grips with the employers long before 
they were strong enough to sustain such a contest. 
It is almost always so with new unions. In their 
infancy, when their members are weak, undisciplined 
and inexperienced, and the employers are bitterly 
hostile and aggressive, is exactly the time when they 
must establish principles and adjust grievances that 
would test the strength of the most powerful unions. 
Inability to do so means dissolution, either through 
a lost strike or by disintegration. Following in the 
wake of the newly formed steel workers' unions 
came a mass of such difficulties requiring immediate 
settlement. The demand for relief from the evils 

[68] 



of long hours, low wages and miserable working con- 
ditions was bad enough; but infinitely more serious 
was the need to take care of the army of men dis- 
charged for union membership. Thousands of these 
walked the streets in the various steel towns clam- 
oring for protection. And the men on the job de- 
manded it for them. Nor could these appeals be 
ignored. Whether they deemed the occasion pro- 
pitious or not, the steel workers' unions, on pain of 
extinction, had to act in defence of their harassed 
membership. 

So bad was the situation by early spring that, 
lacking other means of relief, local strikes were 
threatening all over the country. To allow these 
forlorn-hope walkouts to occur would have meant 
disintegration and disaster to the whole campaign. 
They had to be checked at all costs and the move- 
ment kept upon a national basis. Therefore, the 
National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel 
Workers called a general conference of delegates of 
steelworkers' unions of all trades through the entire 
industry, to take place in Pittsburgh, May 25, 19 19. 
The object was to demonstrate to the rank and file 
how fast the national movement was developing, to 
turn their attention to it strongly, and thus hearten 
them to bear their hardships until it could come to 
their assistance. 

Right in the face of this general movement of all 
the trades the Amalgamated Association made a bid 
for separate consideration by the steel companies. 
By instruction of its convention, President Tighe 
wrote the following letter to Mr. Gary: 

[69] 



Convention Hall, Louisville, Ky., May 15, 1919 
Honorable Elbert H. Gary, Chairman, 
Executive Officers, United States Steel Corporation, 
Hoboken, N. J. 
Dear Sir: 

The Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin 
Workers of North America, in National Convention 
assembled, have by resolution, instructed the under- 
signed to address you as Chairman of the Executive 
Officers of the United States Steel Corporation on a 
matter which in the opinion of the representatives of 
the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin 
Workers, is of vital importance to the Corporation you 
have the honor to represent and to the Amalgamated 
Association. 

As you no doubt are aware, there is a serious dis- 
turbing element in the industrial world at the present 
time, a great spirit of unrest has spread over our com- 
mon country. It is becoming more and more acute, 
and there is no telling when or where the storm clouds 
will break. It is the judgment of the representatives 
of the Amalgamated Association that it is the patriotic 
duty of all good citizens to use their every effort to 
stem the tide of unrest, if possible. 

The Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and 
Tin Workers have admitted many thousands of the 
employees of the United States Steel Corporation into 
their organization; these members are asking that they 
be given consideration by the Corporation you are the 
Honorable Chairman of, in their respective crafts and 
callings, and also that as law-abiding citizens who de- 
sire the privilege of having their representatives meet 
with the chosen representatives of the Corporation you 
represent, to jointly confer on questions that mutually 
I concern both. 

Sincerely believing that the granting of their request 

[70] 



on your part will not only be the means of allaying that 
unrest, but will also promote and insure that harmony 
and co-operation that should at all times exist between 
employer and employee to the end that all will share 
in the glorious triumphs so lately achieved in the war 
and thereby add still more to the lustre and glory of 
our common country. 

Trusting that you will give this request on the part 
of the aforesaid employees of your Corporation your 
most earnest consideration, I await your pleasure. 

M. F. Tighe, International President 
Hotel Tyler, Louisville, Ky. 

To this letter Mr. Gary replied as follows : 

UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION 

Chairman's Office, 
New York, May 20th, 1919 
Mr. M. F. Tighe, 
International President, 
Amalgamated Association of 
Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, 
Pittsburgh, Pa. 
Dear Sir: 

I have read with interest your letter of May 15th 
inst. I agree that it is the patriotic duty of all good 
citizens to use their efforts in stemming the tide of un- 
rest in the industrial world whenever and wherever it 
exists. 

As you know, we do not confer, negotiate with, or 
combat labor unions as such. We stand for the open 
shop, which permits a man to engage in the different 
lines of employment, whether he belongs to a labor union 
or not. We think this attitude secures the best results 
to the employees generally and to the employers. 

In our own way, and in accordance with our best 

[71] 



judgment, we are rendering efficient patriotic service 
in the direction indicated by you. 
With kind regards, I am, 

Yours respectfully, 
E. H. Gary, Chairman 

The Amalgamated Association's action threatened 
the existence of the general movement, but Mr. 
Gary's refusal to deal with its officials kept them in 
the fold. Where the principle of solidarity was 
lacking outside pressure served the same end. It 
would be interesting to hear the Amalgamated Asso- 
ciation officials explain this attempt at desertion. 

At the conference of May 25 there assembled 583 
delegates, representing twenty-eight international 
unions in eighty steel centers, the largest gathering of 
steel worker delegates in the history of the indus- 
try. The reports of the men present made it 
clearly evident that action had to be taken to de- 
fend the interests of their constituents. Conse- 
quently, disregarding the rebuff given the Amalga- 
mated Association by Mr. Gary, the conference, 
which was only advisory in character, adopted the 
following resolution: 

RESOLUTION 

Whereas, We have now arrived at a point in our 
nation-wide campaign where our organizations control 
great numbers of the workers in many of the most im- 
portant steel plants in America, and 

Whereas, Various officials of the iron and steel in- 
dustry, including Judge Gary, Charles Schwab, and 
other heads of these gigantic corporations have expressed 

[72] 



their solicitude for the welfare of the workers in this 
industry, and 

Whereas, They have been continuously quoted as 
defenders of the rights of the workers in industry, and 

Whereas, The corporations, to block our progress, 
are organizing company unions, discharging union men 
wholesale and otherwise trying to break up our organ- 
ization, thus compelling us to take action to escape des- 
truction, therefore be it 

Resolved, That it be the will of this conference that 
a joint effort be made by all unions affiliated with the 
National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel 
Workers to enter into negotiations with the various 
steel companies to the end that better wages, shorter 
hours, improved working conditions and the trade-union 
system of collective bargaining be established in the steel 
industry; and be it further 

Resolved, That this resolution be submitted for ac- 
tion to the National Committee for Organizing Iron 
and Steel Workers at its next meeting in Washington, 
D. C, May 27. 

Two days later the National Committee met in 
Washington and adopted this resolution. The fol- 
lowing were appointed as a conference committee to 
have charge of the preliminary negotiations with the 
steel companies : Samuel Gompers, Chairman of the 
National Committee; John Fitzpatrick, Acting 
Chairman; D. J. Davis, Amalgamated Association; 
Edw. J. Evans, Electrical Workers, Wm. Hannon, 
Machinists; Wm. Z. Foster, Railway Carmen. As 
the first approach, Mr. Gompers addressed the fol- 
lowing letter to Mr. Gary, requesting a conference : 



[73] 



AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR 

The Alamac Hotel, 
Atlantic City, N. J., June 20, 1919 
Mr. Elbert H. Gary, Chairman, 

Board of Directors, U. S. Steel Corporation, 
New York, N. Y. 
Dear Sir: 

Of course you are aware that upon the request of 
a number of men in the employ of the United States 
Steel Corporation, and realizing the need of it, the 
convention of the American Federation of Labor de- 
cided to respond and give such assistance as is possible 
in order to bring about more thorough organization of 
the workers in the iron and steel industry, particularly 
those employed by your Corporation. 

A campaign of organization was begun in June, 1918, 
and within that period we have secured the organization 
of more than 100,000 of the employees in the iron and 
steel industry. The prospects for the complete organ- 
ization are, I am informed, exceedingly bright. 

Of course, knowing the policy of the Organized La- 
bor movement I have the honor in part to represent, we 
aim to accomplish the purposes of our labor movement; 
that is, better conditions for the toilers, by American 
methods, and American understandings, not by revo- 
lutionary methods or the inauguration of a cataclysm. 

We believe in the effort of employer and employees 
to sit down around a table and, meeting thus, face to 
face, and having a better understanding of each others 
position in regard to conditions of labor, to hours, 
standards, etc., and after reaching an amicable under- 
standing to enter into an agreement for collective bar- 
gaining that is to cover wages, hours of labor, condi- 
tions of employment, etc. 

At the Atlantic City convention of the American 
Federation of Labor just closed, the committee re- 

[74] 



ported upon the progress made, and I am instructed 
and authorized to suggest to you whether you will con- 
sent to hold a conference with a committee represent- 
ing not only the iron and steel workers who are organ- 
ized, but representing the best interests of the unorgan- 
ized men in the employ of your Corporation. The 
names of the committee I am asking you to meet are: 

Assistant President Davis, Amalgamated Iron and 
Steel and Tin Workers. 

William Hannon, member executive board, Inter- 
national Association of Machinists. 

Edward Evans, representing International Brother- 
hood of Electrical Workers. 

Wm. Z. Foster, secretary of the National Committee 
for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers and represent- 
ing the Brotherhood of Carmen of America. 

John Fitzpatrick, president Chicago Federation of 
Labor. 

If you can advise me at your early convenience that 
the request contained in this letter meets with your ap- 
proval and that a conference can be held, I am sure 
I shall be additionally appreciative. 

Kindly address your reply, which I trust may be 
favorable, to the American Federation of Labor Build- 
ing, Washington, D. C. 

Respectfully yours, 

Samuel Gompers, 
President American Federation of Labor 

This letter was sent during the A. F. of L. con- 
vention at Atlantic City. About the same time Mr. 
Gompers resigned the chairmanship of the National 
Committee and appointed in his stead John Fitz- 
patrick, hitherto Acting Chairman. Mr. Fitzpat- 
rick has been President of the Chicago Federation 
of Labor for many years. He is a horseshoer by 

[75] 



trade and one of America's sterling union men. 
Possessed of a broad idealism, unquestioned integ- 
rity, a magnetic personality and a wide knowledge 
of trade-union practice, his services were beyond 
value as Chairman of the committees that carried on 
the organization work in the steel and packing in- 
dustries. He is now taking an active part in the 
launching of the new Labor party. 

To Mr. Gompers' courteous letter Czar Gary did 
not deign to reply. This was bad. It looked like 
war. But the unions had no alternative; they had 
to go ahead. Conditions in the steel industry were 
so unbearable that they had to exert their utmost 
power* to right them, come what might. There- 
fore, after waiting several weeks for word from Mr. 
Gary, the National Committee met, gave the situa- 
tion profound consideration, and adopted the fol- 
lowing resolution : 

RESOLUTION 

Whereas, Working conditions in the steel industry 
are so intolerable and the unrest arising therefrom so 
intense that they can only be remedied by the applica- 
tion of the principles of collective bargaining; and, 

Whereas, All efforts have failed to bring about a 
conference between the heads of the great steel corpora- 
tions and the trade unions, representing many thousands 
of organized steel workers, for the purpose of establish- 
ing trade union conditions in the steel industry; there- 
fore, be it 

Resolved, That the National Committee for Organ- 
izing Iron and Steel Workers recommends to its 24 af- 
filiated unions that they take a strike vote of their local 
unions throughout the steel industry; and, be it further 

Resolved, That a special meeting be held in the 

[76] 



Pittsburgh Labor Temple, July 20th, at 10 A. M., of 
representatives of all the co-operating international 
unions for the purpose of taking action on this matter. 

The National Committee meeting of July 20th, 
called in accordance with the above resolution, ap- 
proached the situation from every possible angle 
and with the keenest sense of responsibility. But it 
had to recognize that the matter was wholly in the 
hands of Mr. Gary and his associates. The resolu- 
tion to take a strike vote of the men was re-adopted. 
Also the following general demands, based on ac- 
curate surveys of the situation, and subject to revi- 
sion over the conference table, were formulated: 

1. Right of collective bargaining 

2. Reinstatement of all men discharged for union ac- 
tivities with pay for time lost 

3. Eight hour day 

4. One day's rest in seven 

5. Abolition of 24-hour shift 

6. Increases in wages sufficient to guarantee American 
standard of living 

7. Standard scales of wages in all trades and classifica- 
tions of workers 

8. Double rates of pay for all overtime after 8 hours, 
holiday and Sunday work 

9. Check-off system of collecting union dues and 
assessments 

10. Principles of seniority to apply in the maintenance, 
reduction and increase of working forces 

11. Abolition of company unions 

12. Abolition of physical examination of applicants for 
employment 

So plain, fair and equitable are these demands that 

[77] 



to reasonable people they require no defence. The 
only explanation they might need relates to #9 and 
#12. The check-off was to apply only to the min- 
ing end of the steel industry, and the abolition of the 
physical examination was to put a stop to the rank 
discrimination practiced by the companies through 
their medical departments. 

A month was allowed in which to take the vote. 
Each trade looked after its own members, with the 
National Committee voting those men who were en- 
rolled but not yet turned over to their respective 
unions, and in some cases the unorganized also. En- 
thusiasm was intense. The steel workers saw a 
glimmer of hope and welcomed with open arms the 
opportunity to right their crying wrongs. When the 
vote was tabulated in Youngstown, Ohio, on August 
20, it was found that every trade had voted over- 
whelmingly for a strike in case no settlement could 
be reached. Whole districts voted to a man in the 
affirmative. Of all the thousands of ballots cast in 
Homestead, Braddock, Rankin, McKeesport, Van- 
dergrift, Pittsburgh and Monessen not one was in 
the negative. Donora produced one " no " vote, 
with the great Youngstown, Chicago and Cleveland 
districts about the same. Everywhere the senti- 
ment was practically unanimous to make a stand. 
The vote was calculated conservatively at 98 per 
cent, for a strike. The Conference Committee was 
accordingly instructed to request a conference with 
the heads of the United States Steel Corporation and 
the big independent companies, and if at the end of 
ten days no such meeting had been arranged, to set 
the strike date. 

[78] 





BALLOT 

IRON & STEEL WORKERS 

The Union Committees are now seeking to get higher wages, 
shorter hours and better working conditions from the, steel com- 
panies. Are you willing to back them up to the extent of stopping 
work should the companies refuse to concede these demands ? 

TAJNO GLASANJE 
Odbor junije sada traii da se dobije bolja placa, kraci radni satovi i bolji uvjeti 
za rad od kompanija celika. Dali ste voljni isti do skrajnosti podupreti da se 
prestane sa radom ako bi kompanija odbila da udovolji zahtevima ? 

SZAVAZZON! 

Az Union Bizottsaga, az Acel Tarsasagoktol valo — magasabb fizetes, 
rovidebb munka ido es jobb munka feltetelek — elnyerese utan torekszik. 
Akar ezek utan torekedni? s a vegsokig kitarta — ni? es ha a tarsasagok 
ezen kivanatmaknak nem tesznek eleget a munkat besztintetni ? 

VOTAZIONE. 
I comitati dell'Unione stanno cercando di ottenere paghe phi' ahe, ore 
di lavoro piu' brevi, e migliori condizioni di lavoro. Desiderate voi assecondarli, 
anche quando dovesse essere necessario di fermare il lavoro se le Compagnie 
rifiutassero di accettare le domande? 

HLASOVACI LlSTOK 
Vybor uniovy chce dosiahnuf podvysenie mzdy» menej hodin 
robif a lepsie robotnicke polozenie od oceliarskych spolocnosti. Ste 
vy ochotni ich podporovaf do krajnosti, az do zastavenia price, v pade 
by spolo£nosf odoprela ziadosfucmif tym poiiadavkam. 

BALOT 

Komitet Unii stara si? obecnie o uzyskanie od StalowycK Kompanij wieksZej 
placy, krotszych godzin i lepszych warunkdw pracy. Czy jesteS gotow poprzed 
nas az do mozliwosci wstrzymania pracy na wypadek, gdyby Kompanie 
odmowily naszym zadaniom ? 

VOTE YES OR NO. Mark X in square indicating how you vote 



^^ Yes [_J<_ No 



National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers 
WM. Z. FOSTER, Secy-Treas. 303 Magee Bldg., Pittsburgh, Pa. 



STRIKE BALLOT 



Taking no further chances on unanswered letters, 
the Committee bearded Mr. Gary in his lair at 71 
Broadway. He was in but refused to meet the Com- 
mittee, requesting that its proposition be submitted 
in writing. The Committee thereupon sent him the 
following request for a conference : 

New York, August 26, 19 19 
Hon. Elbert H. Gary, Chairman Finance Committee, 

United States Steel Corporation, 
71 Broadway, New York City 
Dear Sir: 

During a general campaign of organization and edu- 
cation conducted under the auspices of the American 
Federation of Labor, many thousands of men employed 
in the iron and steel industry made application and 
were enrolled as members of the various organizations 
to which they were assigned. 

This work has been carried on to a point where we 
feel justified in stating to you that we represent the 
sentiment of the vast majority of the employees in this 
industry, and, acting in behalf of them, we solicit of 
you that a hearing be given to the undersigned Com- 
mittee, who have been selected by the duly accredited 
representatives of the employees, to place before you 
matters that are of vital concern to them, and con- 
cerning hours of labor, wages, working conditions and 
the right of collective bargaining. 

The committee called at your office at 3 P. M., 
Tuesday, August 26, and requested a conference. We 
were advised by your messenger that you wished to be 
excused from a personal interview at this time and re- 
quested us to have our business in writing and what- 
ever matters we wished to submit would be taken up by 
yourself and your colleagues and given consideration. 

Therefore we are submitting in brief the principal 

[79] 



subjects that we desired to have a conference on. The 
committee has an important meeting in another city on 
Thursday next and will leave New York at 5 o'clock 
on August 27, 1919. May we respectfully request that 
your answer be sent before that time to Mr. John Fitz- 
patrick, Continental Hotel, Broadway and Forty-first 
Street, New York City. 

Very truly yours, 

John Fitzpatrick 
D. J. Davis 
Wm. Hannon 
Edw. J. Evans 
Wm. Z. Foster 

Committee 

To this letter Mr. Gary replied as follows : 

UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION 

Office of the Chairman, 

New York, August 27, 1919 
Messrs. John Fitzpatrick, David J. Davis, William 
Hannon, Wm. Z. Foster, Edw. J. Evans, Committee 
Gentlemen : 

Receipt of your communication of August 26 instant 
is acknowledged. 

We do not think you are authorized to represent the 
sentiment of a majority of the employees of the United 
States Steel Corporation and its subsidiaries. We ex- 
press no opinion concerning any other members of the 
iron and steel industry. 

As heretofore publicly stated and repeated, our Cor- 
poration and subsidiaries, although they do not combat 
labor unions as such, decline to discuss business with 
them. The Corporation and subsidiaries are opposed to 
the " closed shop." They stand for the " open shop," 
which permits one to engage in any line of employment 

[80] 



whether one does or does not belong to a labor union. 
This best promotes the welfare of both employees and 
employers. In view of the well-known attitude as 
above expressed, the officers of the Corporation respect- 
fully decline to discuss with you, as representatives of 
a labor union, any matter relating to employees. In 
doing so no personal discourtesy is intended. 

In all decisions and acts of the Corporation and sub- 
sidiaries pertaining to employees and employment their 
interests are of highest importance. In wage rates, 
living and working conditions, conservation of life and 
health, care and comfort in times of sickness or old age, 
and providing facilities for the general welfare and hap- 
piness of employees and their families, the Corporation 
and subsidiaries have endeavored to occupy a leading 
and advanced position among employers. 

It will be the object of the Corporation and subsid- 
iaries to give such consideration to employees as to 
show them their loyal and efficient service in the past 
is appreciated, and that they may expect in the future 
fair treatment. 

Respectfully yours, 

E. H. Gary, Chairman 

In a last effort to prevail upon Mr. Gary to yield 
his tyrannical position, the committee addressed him 
this further communication: 

New York City, Aug. 27, 1919- 
Hon. Elbert H. Gary, Chairman 

Finance Committee, United States Steel Corporation, 
71 Broadway, New York, N. Y. 
Dear Sir: 

We have received your answer to our request for a 
conference on behalf of the employees of your Corpora- 
tion, and we understand the first paragraph of your 
answer to be an absolute refusal on the part of your 

[81] 



corporation to concede to your employees the right of 
collective bargaining. 

You question the authority of our committee to repre- 
sent the majority of your employees. The only way by 
which we can prove our authority is to put the strike 
vote into effect and we sincerely hope that you will not 
force a strike to prove this point. 

We asked for a conference for the purpose of ar- 
ranging a meeting where the questions of wages, hours, 
conditions of employment, and collective bargaining 
might be discussed. Your answer is a flat refusal for 
such conference, which raises the question, if the ac- 
credited representatives of your employees and the in- 
ternational unions affiliated with the American Federa- 
tion of Labor and the Federation itself are denied a 
conference, what chance have the employees as such to 
secure any consideration of the views they entertain or 
the complaints they are justified in making. 

We noted particularly your definition of the attitude 
of your Corporation on the question of the open and 
closed shop, and the positive declaration in refusing to 
meet representatives of union labor. These subjects 
are matters that might well be discussed in conference. 
There has not anything arisen between your Corpora- 
tion and the employees whom we represent in which the 
question of " the closed shop " has been even mooted. 

We read with great care your statement as to the 
interest the Corporation takes in the lives and welfare 
of the employees and their families, and if that were 
true even in a minor degree, we would not be pressing 
consideration, through a conference, of the terrible con- 
ditions that exist. The conditions of employment, the 
home life, the misery in the hovels of the steel workers 
is beyond description. You may not be aware that the 
standard of life of the average steel worker is below 
the pauper line, which means that charitable institu- 

[82] 



tions furnish to the pauper a better home, more food, 
clothing, light and heat than many steel workers can 
bring into their lives upon the compensation received 
for putting forth their very best efforts in the steel in- 
dustry. Surely this is a matter which might well be dis- 
cussed in conference. 

You also made reference to the attitude of your Cor- 
poration in not opposing or preventing your employees 
from joining labor organizations. It is a matter of 
common knowledge that the tactics employed by your 
Corporation and subsidiaries have for years most effec- 
tively prevented any attempt at organization by your 
employees. We feel that a conference would be valu- 
able to your Corporation for the purpose of getting facts 
of which, judging from your letter, you seem to be mis- 
informed. 

Some few days are still at the disposal of our commit- 
tee before the time limit will have expired when there 
will be no discretion left to the committee but to en- 
force the decree of your employees whom we have the 
honor to represent. 

We submit that reason and fairness should obtain 
rather than that the alternative shall be compulsory 
upon us. 

Surely reasonable men can find a common ground 
upon which we can all stand and prosper. 

If you will communicate with us further upon this 
entire matter, please address your communication to the 
National Hotel, Washington, D. C, where we will be 
Thursday and Friday, August 28 and 29. 
Very truly yours, 

John Fitzpatrick 
D. J. Davis 
Wm. Hannon 
Edw. J. Evans 
Wm. Z. Foster 
[83] Committee 



No reply came to the last letter. Mr. Gary, be- 
hind the smoke screen of his hypocrisies about the 
u open shop," was determined to have the strike go 
on. But the committee, fully conscious of the tre- 
mendous responsibility resting upon it, was equally 
decided to exhaust every possible means of adjust- 
ment before things came to a rupture. The com- 
mitteemen went to Washington, appeared before the 
Executive Council of the A. F. of L., and received 
its endorsement and praise for the manner in which 
the campaign had been conducted. 

Mr. Gompers was delegated by the Council to go 
with the committee to present the matter to Presi- 
dent Wilson, and to request him to arrange a con- 
ference with the steel people. 

When President Wilson was informed of the true 
situation in the steel industry, that all the men were 
asking for was a conference at which to present 
their grievances — absolutely no other demand hav- 
ing been made upon Mr. Gary — he immediately ad- 
mitted the justice of the committee's position. He 
stated frankly that he was entirely out of sympathy 
with employers who refused to meet with representa- 
tives of their workers for the purpose of bargaining 
collectively on labor conditions, and he definitely 
agreed to use all his influence privately to have Mr. 
Gary alter his decision and to arrange the confer- 
ence. In order to give him a chance to work the 
unions withheld the setting of the strike date. 

A week passed, with no word from the President. 
Conditions in the steel industry were frightful. The 
companies, realizing the importance of striking the 
first blow, were discharging men by the thousands. 

[84] 



The unions could wait no longer. They had to 
move or be annihilated. On September 4, the Na- 
tional Committee met and sent to President Wil- 
son, who was on his ill-starred trip through the West 
advocating the League of Nations, the following 
telegram, in the meantime calling a meeting of the 
Presidents of all the international unions co-operat- 
ing in the steel campaign to consider the critical situ- 
ation : 

Washington, September 4, 1919 
Honorable Woodrow Wilson, 

President of the United States, 
Indianapolis, Ind., en route 

The Executive Committee representing the various 
international unions in the iron and steel industry met 
today to consider the awful situation which exists in 
many of the iron and steel industry centres. The 
coercion, the brutality employed to prevent men and 
unions from meeting in halls engaged, upon private 
property, in the open air, the thuggery of the Corpora- 
tions' emissaries, the wholesale discharge of numbers 
of men for no other reason than the one assigned, that 
they have become members of the unions, have brought 
about a situation such that it is exceedingly difficult to 
withhold or restrain the indignation of the men and the 
resistance they declare it is their purpose to present. 
The Executive Committee, relying upon the case as pre- 
sented to you last week and your earnest declaration to 
endeavor to bring about a conference for the honorable 
and peaceful adjustment of the matters in controversy, 
have thus far been enabled to prevail upon the men not 
to engage in a general strike. We cannot now affirm 
how much longer we will be able to exert that influence ; 
but we urge you, in the great work in which you are 
engaged, to give prompt attention to this most vital of 

[85] 



issues; for if the men can no longer be restrained it is 
impossible to foretell what the future may hold in store 
for an industrial crisis which may ensue and frustrate 
the project which you have worked at for a peaceful 
and honorable adjustment of industrial affairs in our 
country. A meeting of all the Presidents of the twenty- 
four international unions in the steel industry has been 
called to take place on Tuesday, September 9th in 
Washington, D. C. to take such action as they deem 
necessary. May we not have your reply on or before 
that time as to whether or not a conference with the 
Steel Corporation is possible. 

Samuel Gompers 
John Fitzpatrick 
D. J. Davis 
Wm. Hannon 
Edw. J. Evans 
Wm. Z. Foster 

The international presidents met on September 9. 
A telegram from Secretary Tumulty was laid before 
them, to the effect that President Wilson had not 
yet been successful in arranging the requested con- 
ference; that he was somewhat discouraged, but 
was continuing his efforts. The general opinion 
took this to be final, that Mr. Gary had definitely 
refused the President's request. But in order to 
make assurance doubly sure and to convine all in- 
volved that everything possible had been done to 
avert a break, the following further telegram was 
sent to Mr. Wilson, over the objections of some who 
felt it was practically asking him to declare the 
strike : 



[86] 



' Washington, September 9, 1919 

Honorable Woodrow Wilson, 
President of the United States, 
St. Paul Hotel, 

St. Paul, Minnesota 
Secretary Tumulty's telegram of September fifth to 
Samuel Gompers was read today at the meeting of the 
presidents of the twenty-four international unions in the 
steel industry, and given the most careful consideration. 
After a long and earnest discussion of it the undersigned 
were instructed to wire you requesting a more definite 
statement as to the possibility of an early conference 
being arranged by your efforts between the heads of the 
United States Steel Corporation and of the unions in- 
volved. Large numbers of men are being discharged and 
otherwise discriminated against and abused, and it will 
be impossible to hold our men much longer from de- 
fending themselves by striking unless some genuine re- 
lief is vouchsafed them. Our meeting will remain in 
session here for forty-eight hours awaiting your reply 
before taking final action. Please send answer to John 
Fitzpatrick, Chairman of National Committee, Ameri- 
can Federation of Labor Building, Washington, D. C. 

John Fitzpatrick 
M. F. Tighe 
Wm. Hannon 
Wm. Z. Foster 

On the day following Secretary Tumulty's answer 
was laid on the table before the meeting, practically 
repeating what his first telegram had said. It held 
out no definite hope for a conference, neither did it 
suggest any alternative. 1 Clearly the unions had to 

1 Out of courtesy to the President the National Committee has 
never made public these telegrams. 

[87] 



act. President Gompers and others had warned of 
the great power of the Steel Trust and the eager- 
ness with which the employing class would unite to 
give Organized Labor a heavy blow in the steel in- 
dustry. The union representatives keenly realized 
the gravity of the situation and their heavy respon- 
sibilities. It was in this frame of mind that they 
could see no honorable way out of the difficulty ex- 
cept to strike. Accordingly President Tighe of the 
Amalgamated Association moved that the strike be 
set for September 22. His motion was unanimously 
adopted. The die was cast. After telegraphing 
the strike order broadcast, the union men scattered 
to their respective posts to organize the walkout. 

Then came a bolt from the blue. Next morning 
the newspapers carried a telegram from Secretary 
Tumulty to President Gompers requesting that the 
strike be held off until after the Industrial confer- 
ence, beginning October 6. The committeemen 
could hardly believe their eyes, because the telegram 
they had received from Mr. Tumulty had said abso- 
lutely nothing about postponing the strike. Besides, 
since the President had asked Mr. Gary privately to 
grant his workers the conference they were seek- 
ing, and so gave him an opportunity to decline with- 
out publicity, it was incredible that he would pub- 
licly make a request upon the unions which involved 
their destruction, and which they would have openly 
to refuse, thus putting them in a bad light and giving 
their opponents a powerful weapon. But all doubts 
were set at rest by this communication from Mr. 
Gompers : 

[88] 



AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR 

Washington, D. C, Sept. n, 1919 
Mr. John Fitzpatrick, Chairman, 

National Committee For Organizing Iron 
and Steel Workers, 
Washington, D. C, 
Dear Mr. Fitzpatrick : 

This morning I received a telegram as follows: 

Dickinson, N. Dak., Sept. 10, 1919 
Hon. Samuel Gompers, 

President American Federation of Labor, 
Washington, D. C. 

In view of the difficulty of arranging any present 
satisfactory mediation with regard to the steel situation, 
the President desires to urge upon the steel men, through 
you, the wisdom and desirability of postponing actiort 
of any kind until after the forthcoming Industrial con- 
ference at Washington. J. P. Tumulty. 

You are aware of the reason which prevented my 
participating further, the past few days, in the confer- 
ences with the representatives of the various national 
and international unions involved in this question. 

In transmitting the above to you (which I am doing 
by long distance telephone from New York) I want to 
express the hope that something can be done without 
injury to the workers and their cause to endeavor to 
conform to the wish expressed by the President; that 
even though the corporations may endeavor to provoke 
the men to action, that they may hold themselves in 
leash and under self-control, consciously demonstrating 
their stamina and willingness to abide by the justice of 
their cause and that their rights will be finally pro- 
tected. Fraternally yours, 

Samuel Gompers, 

President 
American Federation of Labor 

[89] 



Upon the receipt of this letter a meeting of the 
National Committee was at once called to consider 
the situation. And a serious one it was indeed. 
Before the Committee lay two requests to postpone 
the strike; one from President Wilson, clear and 
categoric; the other from Mr. Gompers, qualified 
by the hope that it could be done " without injury 
to the workers and their cause." To deny these 
powerful requests meant to be accused, in the first 
instance, of hasty and disloyal action, and in the 
second, of practical revolt against the officials of 
the A. F. of L. It would be to start the strike under 
the handicap of an unduly hostile public opinion. 
Yet to grant them meant ruin complete. 

Conditions in the steel industry were desperate. 
Everywhere the employers were making vigorous at- 
tacks on the unions. From Chicago, Youngstown, 
Newcastle, Steubenville, Wheeling, Buffalo, Pitts- 
burgh, and many other points large numbers of men 
were being thrown out of work because of their 
union membership. Johnstown was a bleeding 
wound. In the towns along the Monongahela river 
thousands of discharged men walked the streets, and 
their number was daily being heavily increased. 

In the face of this situation it would have been 
folly to have the steel workers abandon their strike 
preparations, even if it could have been done. It 
was like asking one belligerent to ground arms in the 
face of its onrushing antagonist. The employers 
gave not the slightest sign of a truce. Long before 
anything could be hoped for from the Industrial 
conference, they would have cut the unions to pieces, 

[90] 



had the workers been foolish enough to give them 
the opportunity. 

This the steel workers were determined not to do. 
Immediately after the story got abroad that the 
strike might be postponed, they met in their unions 
and notified the National Committee that they were 
going to strike on September 22, regardless of any- 
thing that body might do short of getting them defi- 
nite concessions and protection. Many long weary 
months they had waited patiently, under the urgings 
of the organizers, for a chance to redress their griev- 
ances. And now when they had built their organi- 
zations; taken their strike vote; received their strike 
call and were ready to deliver a blow at their op- 
pressors, the opportunity of a generation was at 
hand, and they were not going to see it lost. They 
would not postpone indefinitely, and in all likelihood 
break up altogether, the movement they had suf- 
fered so much to build, in the vague hope that the 
Industrial conference, which they had no guarantee 
would even consider their case, and which was domi- 
nated by their arch enemies, Gary and Rockefeller, 
would in some distant day do something for them. 
Their determination to have the strike go on was 
intensified by the constant ding-donging of the Steel 
Trust propaganda in the mills to the effect that the 
A. F. of L. unions were cowardly and corrupt; that 
they would make no fight for the steel workers, and 
that a postponement of the strike would be proof 
positive that they had sold out. Under such circum- 
stances the workers could not consent to the with- 
holding of the strike. Practically all the steel dis- 

[91] 



tricts in the country solemnly warned the National 
Committee that they would strike on September 22, 
in spite of any postponement that was not based on 
positive assurances that justice would be done. The 
control of the situation was in the hands of the rank 
and file. 

The field secretaries and organizers present at the 
National Committee meeting, men intimately ac- 
quainted with actual conditions, emphasized the im- 
possibility of postponement. Many of them, among 
whom were some of the best and most conservative 
men in the whole campaign, declared that an at- 
tempt to delay the strike, merely upon the strength 
of possible action by the Industrial conference, would 
result in the swift destruction of the movement under 
the worst of circumstances. The workers would be 
bound to consider it a gigantic sell-out and to act 
acordingly. As for themselves, they declared they 
would have nothing to do with it, and would be com- 
pelled to present their resignations the minute a 
motion to postpone prevailed. Dozens of them 
took this stand. 

To the National Committee two courses were 
open: (1) It could postpone the strike with the ab- 
solute certainty that it would break the steel move- 
ment by so doing, because the strike would have gone 
ahead anyway in a series of wild, uncontrolled, 
leaderless revolts, waged in an atmosphere fatally 
charged with accusations of cowardice and graft. 
In all probability the A. F. of L. would suffer one 
of the worst defeats in its history, and gain such an 
evil reputation among the steel workers that it could 

[92] -i 



not approach them for many years, if ever, with an 
organization project. Or (2) it could go ahead 
with the strike, with a fighting chance to win. In 
any event, even if the strike were lost, it would be 
through a clean fight and the honor of the move- 
ment would be preserved. The steel workers would 
be convinced that everything possible had been done 
for them. Thus the unions would retain their con- 
fidence and be enabled to re-organize them at an 
early date. 

Between certain, ignominious defeat and possible 
victory, or at the worst honorable failure, the Na- 
tional Committee had only one choice. Practically 
all the delegates present were of the opinion that the 
strike had to go on. But some had to wire their 
international offices to cancel their instructions to 
vote for postponement. On September 18, D. J. 
Davis, Assistant President of the Amalgamated As- 
sociation moved that September 22 be reaffirmed as 
the strike date. This was carried. 1 Then the Con- 
ference Committee addressed a long letter to Presi- 
dent Wilson, explaining in detail the situation as the 
union men saw it and outlining the reasons for not 

1 After he had been made fully acquainted with the situation Mr. 
Gompers said before the Senate Committee on Education and 
Labor, investigating the steel strike: (Hearings, page 109) "Not- 
withstanding what any of the officials of the trade unions would 
have done, regardless of what the Committee would have done, the 
strike would have occurred anyway, a haphazard, loose, disjointed, 
unorganized strike, without leadership, without consultation, with- 
out advice. It was simply a choice whether the strike would take 
place under the guidance and leadership of men who have proven 
their worth, or under the leadership of some one who might spring 
up for the moment." 

[93] 



postponing the strike. The letter closed as follows : 

Mr. President, delay is no longer possible. We have 
tried to find a way but cannot. We regret that for the 
first time your call upon Organized Labor cannot meet 
with favorable response. Believe us the fault is not 
ours. If delay were no more than delay, even at the 
cost of loss of membership in our organizations, we 
would urge the same to the fullest of our ability, not- 
withstanding the men are set for an immediate strike. 
But delay here means the surrender of all hope. This 
strike is not at the call of the leaders, but that of the 
men involved. Win or lose, the strike is inevitable and 
will continue until industrial despotism will recede from 
the untenable position now occupied by Mr. Gary. 
We have faith in your desire to bring about a confer- 
ence and hope you will succeed therein. We fully 
understand the hardships that meanwhile will follow 
and the reign of terror that unfair employers will insti- 
tute. The burden falls upon the men, but the great 
responsibility therefor rests upon the other side. 

After agreeing that all settlements made with the 
employers should cover all trades, and sending a let- 
ter to the independent steel companies inviting con- 
ferences with them, the meeting adjourned and the 
organizers and delegates left to make good the fol- 
lowing strike call, of which 200,000 copies, in seven 
languages, had been scattered broadcast throughout 
the entire steel industry : 

STRIKE SEPTEMBER 22, 1919 

The workers in the iron and steel mills and blast 
furnaces, not working under union agreements, are re- 
quested not to go to work on September 22, and to re- 

[94] 



fuse to resume their employment until such time as the 
demands of the organizations have been conceded by the 
steel corporations. 

The union committees have tried to arrange confer- 
ences with the heads of the steel companies in order that 
they might present our legitimate demands for the right 
of collective bargaining, higher wages, shorter hours 
and better working conditions. But the emplovers have 
steadfastly refused to meet them. It therefore becomes 
our duty to support the committees' claims, in accord- 
ance with the practically unanimous strike vote, by re- 
fusing to work in the mills on or after September 22, 
until such time as our just demands have been granted. 
And in our stoppage of work let there be no violence. 
The American Federation of Labor has won all its 
great progress by peaceful and legal methods. 

IRON AND STEEL WORKERS ! A historic de- 
cision confronts us. If we will but stand together now 
like men our demands will soon be granted and a golden 
era of prosperity will open for us in the steel industry. 
But if we falter and fail to act this great effort will 
be lost, and we will sink back into a miserable and hope- 
less serfdom. The welfare of our wives and children 
is at stake. Now is the time to insist upon our rights as 
human beings. 

STOP WORK SEPTEMBER 22 
National Committee 
for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers. 



[95] 



VII 
THE STORM BREAKS 

THE STEEL TRUST ARMY — CORRUPT OFFICIALDOM 

CLAIRTON MCKEESPORT THE STRIKE 

SHOWING BY DISTRICTS — A TREASONABLE ACT 
— GARY GETS HIS ANSWER 

As the memorable twenty-second of September ap- 
proached a lurid and dramatic setting developed for 
the beginning of the great steel strike. Everywhere 
the steel companies made gigantic preparations to 
crush their aspiring workers back to slavery. The 
newspapers shrieked revolution. The whole coun- 
try was a-tremble with anxiety and apprehension. 

Pittsburgh was the storm center. There, in its 
stronghold, the Steel Trust went ahead with strike- 
breaking measures unprecedented in industrial his- 
tory. It provisioned and fortified its great mills 
and furnaces, surrounding them with stockades 
topped off with heavily charged electric wires, and 
bristling with machine guns. It assembled whole 
armies of gunmen. Brute force was to be used 
in breaking the solidarity of the workers. Said 
the New York World editorially September 22: 
" In anticipation of the steel strike, what do we 
see? In the Pittsburgh district thousands of deputy 
sheriffs have been recruited at several of the 

[96] 



larger plants. The Pennsylvania State Constabu- 
lary has been concentrated at commanding points. 
At other places the authorities have organized bodies 
of war veterans as special officers. At McKeesport 
alone 3,000 citizens have been sworn in as special 
police deputies subject to instant call. It is as 
though preparations were made for actual war." 

Along the Monongahela river from Pittsburgh to 
Clairton, a distance of twenty miles, there were not 
less than 25,000 armed men in the service of the 
Steel Trust. In the entire Pittsburgh district, prac- 
tically all the petty parasites who prey upon the steel 
workers — the professional and small business men 
— had been sworn in as deputies and furnished fire- 
arms to defend their great overlord, to whom they 
all do unquestioning service no matter how dirty the 
job. During the strike Sheriff Haddock of Alle- 
gheny county stated to the Senate Committee investi- 
gating the strike that there were 5,000 deputy sher- 
iffs and 5,000 strikers in his jurisdiction, or one dep- 
uty for each striker. His totals should have been 
multiplied by at least ten in each case; 50,000 depu- 
ties and 50,000 strikers would have been well below 
the mark. It is noteworthy that although the dan- 
ger of an uprising in the Pittsburgh district was 
widely advertised no appeal was made for troops, nor 
was there even any talk of an appeal. The reason 
was that the Steel Trust had a vast army of its own, 
officered by its own officials, and it needed no out- 
side help. 

Western Pennsylvania is controlled body and soul 
by the Steel Trust. The whole district has the psy- 
chology of a company-owned town. All authority 

[97] 



centers in the steel industry. From there practi- 
cally every institution takes its orders. Local gov- 
ernmental agencies are hardly more than public 
service departments of the Steel Trust. Their of- 
ficials, city, county, state and federal, obey the 
mandates of the steel magnates just about as readily 
and naturally as do the superintendents and mill 
bosses. No less than the latter they felt it to be 
their duty to break the strike by whatever means 
their masters told them to use. 

With the approach of the strike these lackey of- 
ficials hastened en masse to the aid of the Steel Trust. 
Sheriff Haddock, besides swearing in an army of 
guards and turning them over to the steel companies 
to carry out their plan of terrorism, issued a flaming 
proclamation practically setting up martial law and 
making it a riotous assembly for three steel workers 
to meet together. Next day, September 21, the 
organizers tried to hold a meeting in North Clairton 
— with the Burgess' permission, and at a place on 
the public commons especially set aside by the au- 
thorities for union meetings. About 3,000 steel 
workers gathered to hear the speakers. Everything 
was going as peacefully as a Sunday school picnic, 
when suddenly a troop of State Constabulary ap- 
peared upon the scene, and without a word of warn- 
ing, rode full tilt into the crowd, clubbing and 
trampling men and women indiscriminately. They 
tore down and threw in the mud the American flag 
floating above the speakers' stand. Scores were ar- 
rested (including organizers J. B. Etchison and P. 
H. Brogan) and held for heavy bonds on charges of 

[98] 



rioting. 1 Many were seriously injured, but fearing 
to report their cases to the doctors and thus court 
arrest, as the latter were nearly all deputies, they 
cured themselves as best they could. This crying 
outrage was perpetrated under the authority of the 
Sheriff's proclamation. It was endorsed and lauded 
by Governor Sproul, than whom the Steel Trust has 
no more willing champion. 

At the same hour as the Clairton outrage a similar 
attack was made on the workers at Glassport, ad- 
joining McKeesport. Not being allowed to meet at 
the latter city the organizers had leased a plot of 
ground in Glassport and had been holding regular 
meetings there, with the full sanction of the local 
authorities. For the meeting in question they had 
an official permit. But just as it was about to begin 
the State Constabulary broke it up in true Cossack 
fashion, almost riding down the Burgess in so doing. 
They arrested all they could seize. These were held 
as rioters under bail of from $1,000 to $3,000 each. 
The venal Pittsburgh papers screamed about the out- 
breaks that had been crushed by the gallant State 
police, and praised them for their bravery in fac- 
ing the " rioting mobs." 

Despite all these terroristic methods the Steel 

1 In this connection occurred one of the finest incidents in the 
strike: Wm. J. Brennan, an able, conscientious attorney of Pitts- 
burgh, and one of the counsel who defended the Homestead strikers 
in 1892, went to Clairton to get the "rioters" released on bonds. 
But such a state of terror existed that no one dared to go their bail. 
Thereupon, Mr. Brennan himself, without knowing a single one of 
the defendants, but smarting under the injustice of it all, pledged 
his entire property holdings, amounting to $88,000, to get them set 
free. 

[99] 



Trust could not break the will of its workers. On 
September 22 they struck throughout the entire indus- 
try with a discipline and universality that will be re- 
membered so long as steel is made in America. On 
Tuesday, the twenty-third, 304,000 had quit their 
posts in the mills and furnaces. All week their 
ranks were augmented until by September 30, there 
were 365,600 on strike. It was a magnificent effort 
for freedom, and twice as big a strike as this coun- 
try had ever known. By cities and districts, the 
numbers of strikers were as follows : 

Pittsburgh 25,000 

Homestead 9,000 

Braddock 10,000 

Rankin 5,000 

Clairton 4,000 

Duquesne & McKeesport 12,000 

Vandergrift 4,000 

Brackenridge 5,ooo 

New Kensington 1,100 

Apollo . 1,500 

Leechburg 3,000 

Donora & Monessen 12,000 

Johnstown 18,000 

Coatesville 4,000 

Youngstown district, 

including Youngstown, E. Youngstown, 
Struthers, Hubbard, Niles, Canton, Al- 
liance, Massillon, Warren, Farrell, New- 
castle, Sharon, Butler, etc. 70,000 

Wheeling district 15,000 

Cleveland 25,000 

Steubenville district « , , , 12,000 

[lOO] 



Chicago district, 

including Gary, Joilet, DeKalb, South 
Chicago, Indiana Harbor, East Chicago, 
Hammond, Evanston, Sterling, Peoria, 

Milwaukee, etc 90,000 

Buffalo district 12,000 

Pueblo 6,000 

Birmingham 2,000 

5 Bethlehem Plants 20,000 

Total. 365,600 

The shutdown was almost complete. Through- 
out the country the industry was stricken with 
paralysis. On an average the strike was at least 
90 per cent, effective. In the great Chicago dis- 
trict practically all the men struck, hamstringing the 
big plants in the various steel towns of that section, 
Gary, Joliet, Indiana Harbor, South Chicago, etc. 
The holding of the organizations in this district for 
a year, in the face of Steel Trust opposition, by the 
organizers under Secretary Evans, and later, De 
Young, was one of the most notable achievements of 
the whole campaign. When the pent-up force was 
finally released it swept the district like a flood, 
leaving hardly a wheel turning anywhere. 

Youngstown is another place where great difficul- 
ties had been encountered in the organizing work, 
the workers being deeply discouraged by recently 
lost local strikes, and the authorities at some points 
so hostile that it was impossible to hold meetings in 
the strategic places. But so widespread was the dis- 
content at the miserable working conditions, and so 
well had the district crew of organizers under Secre- 

[10!] 



taries McCadden and Hammersmark done their 
work that when the strike clarion sounded, the 
masses of steel workers responded almost to a man. 
Trust plants and " independents " alike had to shut 
down. The steel working population of the entire 
Mahoning Valley went on holiday. It was a clean 
walkout. In the outer Youngstown district, as 
established by the National Committee system, the 
| companies, by the use of desperate tactics, succeeded 
in keeping some of their men at work; in Sharon, 
Farrell and Newcastle probably twenty per cent re- 
fused to obey the strike call. But in Canton and 
Massillon, John Olchon and the other organizers 
brought all the important mills to a dead stop. 

Without exception, the enormous Cleveland mills 
and furnaces shut down tight. In Johnstown the 
Cambria Company was so hard hit that, swallowing 
its pride, it had to ask the hated unions for a de- 
tachment of workers to protect its plants. The Buf- 
falo district men struck almost ioo per cent., after 
a bitter organizing campaign and an eight months' 
free speech fight. The Wheeling and Steubenville 
districts' steel mills and blast furnaces were aban- 
doned altogether by their crews. In Coatesville 
and Birmingham, the response was poor, in the first 
locality because of insufficient organization; and in 
the second because of discouragement due to a lost 
local strike the year before. But in far away Col- 
orado, the steel workers, hearkening to the voice of 
freedom abroad in the land, expressed their contempt 
for the company-union slavery of John D. Rocke- 
feller, Jr., by tieing up every department in his big 
Pueblo mills. 

[102] 



In the immediate Pittsburgh district, though 
here more strenuously opposed by the Steel Trust, 
the strike ranged from 75 to 85 per cent, effective. 
That it did not go as strong as other districts was 
purely because of the denial, by the companies and 
the authorities, of the workers' rights to meet and to 
organize. In the " Black Valley n section of the dis- 
trict, comprising the towns lying along the Allegheny 
river, Apollo, Vandergrift, Leechburg, Bracken- 
bridge, Natrona and New Kensington, and notorious 
as the scene of the brutal murder of organizer Mrs* 
Fannie Sellins, the strike went 90 per cent, or better; 
but in the Monongahela river section it was not so 
good. Of the steel towns in that district, Donora 
and Monessen took the lead with a 100 per cent, 
strike. Due to the terrorism prevailing exact figures 
were almost impossible to get for the other towns, 
but according to the best information procurable they 
averaged about as follows; Clairton 95, Braddock 
90, Homestead 80, Rankin 85, McKeesport 70, and 
Duquesne 50 per cent. In Pittsburgh itself all the 
larger mills and furnaces, except those of the Jones 
and Laughlin Company, either suspended operations 
altogether or lost heavily of their employees during 
the first two days of the strike. The Jones and 
Laughlin men had been profoundly discouraged by a 
lost strike two years previously, and had responded 
poorly to the organizers' efforts. But when they 
saw the magnitude of the strike they took heart some- 
what, and by strenuous efforts in a rapid fire cam- 
paign, the organizers had at least 60 per cent, of 
them on strike by the end of the first week. 

In the plants of the Bethlehem Steel Company 

[103] 



the strike did not become effective until September 
29. The cause was to be found in local conditions. 
In the early spring of 19 18, before the National 
Committee began its campaign, ruthless exploita- 
tion by the company had resulted in a strike of ma- 
chine shop employees. The National War Labor 
Board settled the strike, erecting a shop organiza- 
tion to handle grievances. In the meantime the Na- 
tional Committee came into the field and began ac- 
tive operations. Up till this time the organized 
movement, led by David Williams and Patrick 
Duffy, had been confined principally to the Machin- 
ists, Electrical workers and a few other skilled 
trades; but now it spread to the main body of the 
employees. To head it off the company proposed 
to the National Committee that a Rockefeller union 
be set up in the plants. Naturally this was unaccept- 
able. Then they offered to sign an agreement cover- 
ing all their shipyard employees if the organization 
of their steel plants was given up, feeling no doubt 
that the shipyard boom was only temporary. For 
the National Committee, John Fitzpatrick spurned 
this shameful trade, and the organization campaign 
went on — with the shipyard men getting their 
agreement later on just the same. 

Technically the employees of the Bethlehem Com- 
pany should have struck under the first strike call, 
as they had no union agreement; but being tied up 
with futile negotiations under their u collective bar- 
gaining " arrangement, they did not get out until the 
twenty-ninth. When they did strike the response 
was not so good. A fair average for the plants in 
South Bethlehem, Steelton, Reading, Lebanon and 

[104] 



Sparrows' Point would be a 50 per cent, strike. 

On the whole the strike affected practically the 
entire industry, seventy important steel centres be- 
ing involved. About the only mills of consequence 
to escape it were those located at Midland, Wood- 
lawn, Lorain and Duluth. And the only reason for 
this was lack of sufficient organizers to cover them. 
It is noteworthy that the strike followed strictly the 
lines of organization. In hardly a single instance 
did the unorganized go out spontaneously, even 
though they had previously been clamoring for the 
unions to help them. This tends to show how com- 
pletely the steel companies dominated their unor- 
ganized workers and how hard it was for the latter 
to act in concert. 

For the most part the great walkout was concen- 
trated on the smelting and rolling branches of the 
steel industry. It had been the original intention to 
make the movement thoroughly industrial, taking in 
all the workers from those who mine the coal and 
iron to those who transfer the finished products to 
the railroad lines. But insufficient resources com- 
pelled the modification <of this program, and forced 
the unions to confine their work principally to the 
blast furnaces and rolling mills. However, where 
the company mines or fabricating works lay close to 
the general plants, or were part of them, the essen- 
tially industrial character of the campaign mani- 
fested itself and these departments were organized 
along with the rest. In various places, including 
Gary, Chicago, Homestead, etc., bridge, car, and 
other fabricating shops were an integral part of the 
drive. The iron miners working close in to Birm- 

[105] 



1 



ingham responded to some extent, but a big defeat 
of the local metal trades in the mills a couple of 
years previously held them back from making a 
strong demonstration. The coal miners struck in 
several places. In Johnstown, 2,000 of them work- 
ing in the Cambria Steel Company's mines organized 
during the campaign, became affiliated with the local 
mill workers' council, and walked out 100 per cent, 
on the historic twenty-second of September. 

Although the United States Steel Corporation 
was recognized as the arch enemy of the unions, the 
strike was not directed against it alone. Every iron 
and steel mill and furnace in the country not work- 
ing under union agreements was included. This 
meant at least 95 per cent, of the industry, because 
the only agreements of any consequence were be- 
tween some of the smaller companies and the Amal- 
gamated Association. A number of these concerns 
were affected also, their agreements relating only to 
skilled workers, and the plants having to close when 
the laborers struck. This occurred quite extensively 
in the Cleveland, Youngstown and Pittsburgh dis- 
tricts. 

Considering the large number of them involved 
and their traditions of isolated action, the unions 
displayed reasonably good solidarity in going " over 
the top " against the Steel Trust. The battle line 
was far from perfect, however. Much harm was 
done the morale of the strikers by local unions here 
and there that were under the sway of ignorant 
blockheads or designing tools of the bosses, refusing 
to recognize the National Committee's strike call 
and insisting upon getting instructions from their 

[106] 



own headquarters, meanwhile scabbing it in the mills. 
And the worst of it was that sometimes it was diffi- 
cult, or even impossible to have the necessary instruc- 
tions issued. 

Far more serious than this, however, was the 
action of the executive officers of the International 
Union of Steam and Operating Engineers. Just 
as the strike was about to begin President Snellings 
and Secretary Comerford sharply condemned it 
by letter and through the press, urging their men 
to stay at work upon the flimsy pretext that the 
President's industrial conference would attend to 
their interests. Roused to indignation by this cold- 
blooded course, the local unions of engineers, al- 
most without exception, repudiated their inter- 
national misleaders and struck with the rest of the 
steel workers. After President Gompers had been 
quoted in the newspapers as pledging the support of 
the A. F. of L. to the strike (two days after it 
started) and Labor generally had shown its deter- 
mination to stick by the steel workers, the officers 
of the Engineers' international were compelled to 
publicly endorse the strike. But throughout its 
duration they nevertheless privately encouraged 
their strategically situated tradesmen to return to 
work, thus doing incalculable harm w T hen the strikers 
had begun to weaken a little. This plain case of 
official scabbery was inspired by a jurisdictional dis- 
pute between the engineers and the electrical workers 
over the disposition to be made of electrical crane- 
men signed up in the campaign. Because they 
could not have their unreasonable way in the mat- 
ter, the officials of the engineers deliberately knifed 

[107] 



the strike and lent aid and comfort to the bitterest 
opponents of Organized Labor on this planet. To 
such extremes will union men go in internecine wars 
over trade demarcations. 

But in spite of opposition, blundering and 
treachery, the steel workers had spoken. Mr. Gary 
was answered. Previous to the strike, he declared 
that the unions represented only an insignificant 
minority of his men, the great bulk of his working 
force being satisfied. He compelled the Committee 
to show its credentials. Result: 365,600 steel 
workers laid down their tools. This estimated total 
has never been disputed by the steel companies. 
Here and there, in some individual town or district, 
they pointed out a figure occasionally as being ex- 
cessive; but although importuned by newspaper men 
to do so, they never ventured to issue a statement of 
the number on strike at all points. The reason was 
that they feared to print the grand total which even 
their lying press bureau would have to admit. 
Word came to the Committee from reliable sources 
that the steel manufacturers considered the union 
figure well within the real total. 

While not accurately ascertainable, the number of 
Mr. Gary's employees actually taking part in the 
strike may be closely approximated. Mr. Gary 
stated to the Senate Committee that the total num- 
ber employed by the United States Steel Corpora- 
tion in the departments affected by the strike was 
201,065. Against this number should be checked 
off about half of the total number of strikers, or 
182,500. This is based upon the theory that the of- 
ficial U. S. Steel Corporation plants form approxi- 

[108] 



mately 50 per cent, of the industry, and that the 
strike was just as effective against them as against 
those of any other company. It is not asserted that 
these figures are absolutely accurate; but they will 
serve to indicate that the claim of a 90 per cent, 
strike in the plants of the Steel Corporation is a fair 
one. It is exceedingly doubtful if as many as 10 
per cent, of Mr. Gary's employees remained at their 
posts and failed to heed the strike call. Fully 125,- 
000 of them were members of the unions before the 
strike started, and most of the rest would have been 
also, had they dared brave the anger of their bosses. 
The great steel strike thoroughly exposed the 
hypocrisies of Mr. Gary and his -ilk that in some 
mysterious way labor policies and conditions in the 
steel industry depend upon the wishes of the body of 
the workers. It made plain that in the autocratic 
system now prevailing the democratic principles of 
majority and minority do not enter. It is a case 
pure and simple of the absolute sway of property 
rights over human rights. A handful of social para- 
sites hidden away in Wall street, with no other in- 
terest in the steel industry than to exploit it, settle 
arbitrarily the vital questions of wages, hours and 
working conditions, while the enormous mass of the 
workers, actual producers whose very lives are in- 
volved, have no say whatsoever. No matter how 
bitter their grievances, when they raise their voice to 
ask redress, they are discharged, blacklisted, starved, 
beaten, jailed and even shot, until they bend the 
knee again and yield to the will' of their industrial 
masters. 

[109] 



VIII 
GARYISM RAMPANT 

THE WHITE TERROR — CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS 

DENIED UNBREAKABLE SOLIDARITY FATHER 

KAZINCY THE COSSACKS SCIENTIFIC BAR- 
BARITY — PROSTITUTED COURTS — SERVANTS RE- 
WARDED 

It was the misfortune of the steel strike to occur in 
the midst of the post-war reaction, which still persists 
unabated, and which constitutes the most shameful 
page in American history. Ours are days when the 
organized employers, inspired by a horrible fear of 
the onward sweep of revolution in Europe and the 
irresistible advance of the labor movement in this 
country, are robbing the people over-night of their 
most precious rights, the fruits of a thousand years 
of struggle. And the people, not yet recovered 
from war hysteria and misled by a corrupt press, can- 
not perceive the outrage. They even glory in their 
degradation. Free speech, free press, free as- 
sembly, as we once knew these rights, are now things 
of the past. What poor rudiments of them re- 
main depend upon the whims of a Burleson, or 
the rowdy element of the American Legion. Hun- 
dreds of idealists, guilty of nothing more than 
a temperate expression of their honest views, lan- 
guish in prison serving sentences so atrocious as to 

[no] 



shock the world — although Europe has long since 
released its war and political prisoners. Working 
class newspapers are raided, denied the use of the 
mails and suppressed. Meetings are broken up by 
Chamber of Commerce mobs or thugs in public of- 
fice. The right of asylum is gone — the infamous 
Palmer is deporting hundreds who dare to hold 
views different from his. The right of the workers 
to organize is being systematically curtailed; and 
crowning shame of all, workingmen can no longer 
have legislative representatives of their own choos- 
ing. In a word, America, from being the most for- 
ward-looking, liberty-loving country in the world, 
has in two short years become one of the most re- 
actionary. We in this country are patiently en- 
during tyranny that would not be tolerated in Eng- 
land, France, Italy, Russia or Germany. Our great 
war leaders promised us the New Freedom; they 
have given us the White Terror. 

Realizing full well the reactionary spirit of the 
times, the steel companies proceeded safely to ex- 
tremes to crush the steel strike, dubbed by them an 
attempt at violent revolution. To accomplish their 
end they stuck at nothing. One of their most per- 
sistent and determined efforts was to deprive the 
steel workers of their supposedly inalienable right 
to meet and talk together. Throughout the strike, 
whenever and wherever they could find municipal or 
court officials willing to do their bidding, the steel 
barons abolished the rights of free speech and free 
assembly, so precious to strikers. Few districts 
escaped this evil, but as usual, Pennsylvania felt the 
blow earliest and heaviest. Hardly had the strike 

[mi 



started when the oily Schwab prohibited meetings in 
Bethlehem ; the Allegheny and West Penn Steel Com- 
panies did the same at Natrona, jailing organizer J. 
McCaig for " inciting to riot " ; in the Sharon-Farrell 
district the steel workers, denied their constitutional 
rights in their home towns, had to march several 
miles over into Ohio (America they called it) in 
order to hold their meetings. 

Along the Monongahela river the shut-down was 
complete. Following Sheriff Haddock's proclama- 
tion and the " riots " at Clairton and Glassport, it 
was only a few days until the city and borough 
officials had completely banned strike meetings in 
all the territory from Charleroi to Pittsburgh. 
The unions' free-speech, free-assembly victory of the 
past summer was instantly cancelled. For forty- 
one miles through the heart of America's steel in- 
dustry, including the important centers of Mones- 
sen, Donora, Clairton, Wilson, Glassport, McKees- 
port, Duquesne, Homestead, Braddock, Rankin, etc., 
not a meeting of the steel workers could be held. 
Even in Pittsburgh itself meetings were prohibited 
everywhere except in Labor Temple. The steel- 
collared city officials never could quite muster the 
gall to close Labor's own building — or perhaps be- 
cause it is so far from the mills and so poorly situ- 
ated for meetings they felt it to be of no use to the 
strikers. Thus the Steel Trust gave its workers a 
practical demonstration of what is meant by the 
phrase, " making the world safe for democracy." 

Not only were mass meetings forbidden, but so 
also were regular business meetings under the char- 
ters of the local unions. To test out this particular 

[112] 



usurpation, Attorney W. H. Rubin, then in charge of 
the strike's legal department and possessed of a 
keener faith in Pennsylvania justice than the Strike 
committee had, keener probably than he himself 
now has, prayed the Allegheny County Court of 
Common Pleas to enjoin Mayor Babcock and other 
city officials from interfering with a local union of 
the Amalgamated Association holding its business 
meetings on the south side of the city where its mem- 
bers lived and where several large mills are located. 
At the hearing the Mayor and Chief of Police freely 
admitted that there had been no violence in the 
strike, and even complimented the men on their be- 
havior, but they feared there might be trouble and so 
forbade the meetings. The honorable Judges Ford 
and Shafer agreed with them and denied the writ, 
saying among other things: 

It is the duty of the Mayor and Police Department 
to preserve the peace, and it must be sometimes necessary 
for that purpose to prevent the congregating in one place 
of large numbers of people such as might get beyond the 
control of the Police Department, and it must be left 
to the reasonable discretion of the officers charged with 
keeping the peace when such intervention is made. 

In other words, the sacred right of the workers to 
meet together depends upon the arbitrary will of 
any politician who may get into the office control- 
ling the permits. Shortly before Judges Ford 
and Shafer handed down this noble conception of 
free assembly, Judge Kennedy of the Allegheny 
County Court, ruling on the appeal of Mother 
Jones, J. L. Beaghen, J. M. Patterson and Wm. Z. 

[113] 



Foster in the Duquesne free speech cases of several 
weeks prior to the strike, had this to say: 

It cannot be questioned that the object of these meet- 
ings — increasing the membership in the American 
Federation of Labor — is a perfectly lawful one, but 
the location of the meetings in the Monongahela valley, 
built up as it is for mile after mile of an unbroken suc- 
cession of iron and steel mills, and thickly populated 
with iron workers, many of whom obviously are not 
members of this association, and among whom, on both 
sides, there are, in all probability, some who upon the 
occasion of meetings such as these purported to be, 
might through excitement precipitate serious actions of 
which the consequences could not be foreseen and might 
be disastrous, presents questions which are sufficient to 
cause the court to hesitate before interfering with the 
exercise of discretion on the part of the Mayor in refus- 
ing to permit such meetings at this time. 

The Court is still hesitating to interfere with 
Mayor Crawford's tyranny, and the defendants had 
to pay $100 and costs each for trying to hold a meet- 
ing on ground they had leased. One would think 
that the remedy in the case conjured out of thin air 
by the learned judge (for in the thousands of 
meetings held in the steel campaign he cannot point 
to one incident of violence) would be for the local 
authorities to provide ample police protection to 
insure order. But no, in Pennsylvania the thing to 
do is to set aside the constitutional rights of the 
workers. Would such action be taken in the case of 
members of a Chamber of commerce? Wouldn't 
the governor, rather, order out the state troops, if 
necessary, to uphold their right of assembly? 

[114] 



In the hope of getting some relief, or at the least 
some publicity about the unbearable situation, a com- 
mittee of 1 8 local labor men, representing the largest 
trade unions in Western Pennsylvania, went to 
Washington and presented to the Allegheny County 
congressional delegation a petition expressing con- 
tempt for the judges and other officials in their part 
of the State and asking Congress to give them the 
justice these men refused to mete out. Surely, the 
Allegheny County congressmen were exactly the 
ones to bring the Steel Trust to time. With a grand 
flourish they introduced a resolution into the House 
calling for an investigation — then they forgot all 
about it. 

The official tyranny and outlawry along the 
Monongahela was so bad that the Pennsylvania 
Federation of Labor had to voice its protest. On 
November 1-2 it held a special convention in Pitts- 
burgh, attended by several hundred delegates. A 
resolution was adopted demanding that protection be 
given the rights of the workers, and that if the 
authorities failed to extend this protection, " the 
Executive Council of the Pennsylvania Federation of 
Labor shall issue a call for a State-wide strike, when 
in its judgment it is necessary to compel respect for 
law and the restoration of liberty as guaranteed by 
the Constitution of the United States and of the 
State of Pennsylvania." For this action President 
Jas. H. Maurer of the Federation was hotly as- 
sailed and even menaced with lynching by the law- 
less business interests. 

By some inexplicable mental twist the ex-union 
man Burgess of Homestead eventually allowed the 

[115] 



unions to hold one mass meeting each week — to 
this day the only ones permitted in the forty-one 
miles of Monongahela steel towns. They were 
under the supervision of the State police. At each 
meeting a half dozen of these Cossacks, in full uni- 
form, would sit upon the platform as censors. Only 
English could be spoken. As the saying was, all the 
organizers were permitted to talk about was the 
weather. When one touched on a vital strike phase 
a Cossack would yell at him, " Hey, cut that out! 
You're through, you — ! Don't ever come back 
here any more." And he never could speak there 
again. 

Judging from past experiences the strike in the 
Pittsburgh district should have been impossible 
under such hard circumstances. With little or no 
opportunity to meet for mutual encouragement and 
enlightenment, the strikers, theoretically, should 
have been soon discouraged and driven back to work. 
But they were saved by their matchless solidarity, 
bred of a deep faith in the justice of their cause. 
In the black, Cossack-ridden Monongahela towns 
there were thousands of strikers who were virtually 
isolated, who never attended a meeting during the 
entire strike and seldom if ever saw an organizer or 
read a strike bulletin, yet they fought on doggedly 
for three and one-half months, buoyed up by a bound- 
less belief in the ultimate success of their supreme 
effort. Each felt himself bound to stay away from 
the mills, come weal or come woe, regardless of 
what the rest did. These were mainly the despised 
foreigners, of course, but their splendid fighting 

[116] 



qualities were a never-ending revelation and inspira- 
tion to all connected with the strike. 

Through the dark night of oppression a bright 
beacon of liberty gleamed from Braddock. There 
the heroic Slavish priest, Reverend Adelbert Ka- 
zincy, pastor of St. Michel's Roman Catholic church, 
bade defiance to the Steel Trust and all its minions. 
He threw open his church to the strikers, turned his 
services into strike meetings, and left nothing un- 
done to make the men hold fast. The striking steel 
workers came to his church from miles around, 
Protestants as well as Catholics. The neighboring 
clergymen who ventured to oppose the strike lost 
their congregations, — men, women and children 
flocked to Father Kazincy's, and all of them stood 
together, as solid as a brick wall. 

Reverend Kazincy's attitude aroused the bitterest 
hostility of the steel companies. They did not dare 
to do him bodily violence, nor to close his church by 
their customary "legal" methods; but they tried 
everything else. Unable to get the local bishop to 
silence him, they threatened finally to strangle his 
church. To this the doughty priest replied that if 
they succeeded he would put a monster sign high up 
on his steeple: " This church destroyed by the Steel 
Trust," and he would see that it stayed there. 
When they tried to foreclose on the church mort- 
gage, he promptly laid the matter before his hetero- 
geneous congregation of strikers, who raised the 
necessary $1200 before leaving the building and next 
day brought in several hundred dollars more. Then 
the companies informed him that after the strike no 

[117] 



more Slovaks could get work in the mills. He told 
them that if they tried this, he would do his level 
best to pull all the Slovaks out of the district (they 
are the bulk of the mill forces) and colonize them 
in the West. The promised blacklist has not yet 
materialized. 

Father Kazincy and the clergymen who worked 
with him, notable among whom was the Reverend 
Molnar, a local Slavish Lutheran minister, consti- 
tuted one of the great mainstays of the strike in their 
district. They are men who have caught the true 
spirit of the lowly Nazarene. The memory of their 
loyal co-operation will long live green in the hearts 
of the Pittsburgh district steel strikers. 

A description of the repressive measures taken 
by the Steel Trust against its workers during the 
early period of the strikes necessarily relates almost 
entirely to Western Pennsylvania. With few ex- 
ceptions, the other districts were in a deadlock. So 
tightly were the mills shut down that the companies 
could hardly stir. It took them several weeks to 
get their stricken fighting machinery in motion again. 
But it was different in Western Pennsylvania, in 
what we call the greater Pittsburgh district; that has 
always been the key to the whole industry, and there, 
from the very first, the steel companies made a bit- 
ter fight to control the situation and to break the 
strike. The tactics used there are typical in that 
they came to be universally applied as the strike grew 
older, the degree of their application depending 
upon the amount of control exercised by the Steel 
Trust in the several localities. 

To carry on the terror so well begun by the sup- 

[118] 



pression of free speech and free assembly, the Steel 
Trust turned loose upon the devoted strikers in 
Western Pennsylvania the great masses of armed 
thugs it had been recruiting since long before the 
strike. These consisted of every imaginable type 
of armed guard, official and unofficial, except uni- 
formed troops. There were State Constabulary, 
deputy sheriffs, city police, city detectives, company 
police, company detectives, private detectives, coal 
and iron police, ordinary gunmen, armed strike- 
breakers, vigilantes, and God knows how many 
others. These legions of reaction, all tarred with 
the same brush — a servile, mercenary allegiance to 
the ruthless program of the Steel Trust — vied with 
each other in working hardships upon the steel 
workers. In this shameful competition the State 
Constabulary stood first; for downright villainy and 
disregard of civil and human rights, these so-called 
upholders of law and order easily outdistanced all 
the other plug-uglies assembled by the Steel Trust. 
They merit our special attention. 

The Pennsylvania State Constabulary dates from 
1905, when a law was enacted creating the Depart- 
ment of State Police. The force is modelled some- 
what along the lines of the Royal Irish Constabulary 
and the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police. The 
men are uniformed, mounted, heavily armed and 
regularly enlisted. For the most part they consist 
of ex-United States army men. At present they 
number somewhat less than the amount set by law, 
415 officers and men. Their ostensible duty is to 
patrol the poorly policed rural sections of the state, 
and this they do when they have nothing else to 

[119] 



take up their time. But their real function is to 
break strikes. They were organized as a result of 
the failure of the militia to crush the anthracite 
strike of 1902. Since their inception they have 
taken an active part in all important industrial dis- 
turbances within their jurisdiction. They are the 
heart's darlings of Pennsylvania's great corporations. 
Labor regards them with an abiding hatred. Says 
Mr. Jas. H. Maurer (The Cossack, page 3) : 

The " English Square " is the only open-field mili- 
tary formation of human beings that has ever been 
known to repulse cavalry. All other formations go 
down before the resistless rush of plunging beasts 
mounted by armed men, mad in the fierce excitement 
induced by the thundering gallop of charging horses. 
A charge by cavalry is a storm from hell — for men 
on foot. A cavalry-man's power, courage and daring 
are strangely multiplied by the knowledge that he sits 
astride a swift, strong beast, willing and able to knock 
down a dozen men in one leap of this terrible rush. 
Hence, the Cossacks, the mounted militiamen — for 
crushing unarmed, unmounted groups of men on strike. 

But the State Police do not confine themselves 
merely to the crude business of breaking up so-called 
strike riots. Their forte is prevention, rather than 
cure. They aim to so terrorize the people that they 
will cower in their homes, afraid to go upon the 
streets to transact necessary business, much less to 
congregate in crowds. They play unmercifully 
upon every fear and human weakness. They are 
skilled, scientific terrorists, such as Czarist Russia 
never had. 

[120] 



On a thousand occasions they beat, shot, jailed 
or trampled steel workers under their horses' hoofs 
in the manner and under the circumstances best cal- 
culated to strike terror to their hearts. In Brad- 
dock, for instance, a striker having died of natural 
causes, about two hundred of his fellows assembled 
to accompany the body to the cemetery. To stop 
this harmless demonstration all the State Police 
needed to do was to send a word to the union. But 
such orderly, reasonable methods do not serve their 
studied policy of frightfulness. Therefore, with- 
out previously informing the strikers in any way that 
their funeral party was obnoxious, the Cossacks laid 
in wait for the procession, and when it reached the 
heart of town, where all Braddock could get the 
benefit of the lesson in " Americanism," they 
swooped down upon it at full gallop, clubbing the 
participants and scattering them to the four winds. 

Similar outrageous attacks occurred not once, but 
dozens of times. Let Father Kazincy speak of his 
experiences : 

Braddock, Pa., Sept. 27, 1919 
W. Z. Foster, 

Pittsburgh, Pa., 
Dear Sir: 

The pyramidal impudence of the State Constabulary 
in denying charges of brutal assaults perpetrated by 
them upon the peaceful citizens of the borough of Brad- 
dock prompts me to send a telegram to the Governor 
of Pennsylvania, in which I have offered to bring forth 
two specific cases of bestial transgression of their " call- 
ing." 

On Monday last at 10 a. M. my congregation, leav- 
ing church, was suddenly, without any cause whatever, 

[121] 



attacked on the very steps of the Temple of God, by 
the Constables, and dispersed by the iron-hoofed Huns. 
Whilst dispersing indignation and a blood frenzy 
swayed them, a frenzy augmented by that invisible 
magnetic force, the murmuring, raging force of 3,000 
strong men. One could feel that helpless feeling of 
being lifted up by some invisible force, forced, thrown 
against the flux of raging, elemental passion of resent- 
ment, against the Kozaks of this State. 

Nevertheless, it was the most magnificent display of 
self-control manifested by the attacked ever shown any- 
where. They moved on, with heads lowered and jaws 
firmly set, to submit. Oh, it was great ; it was magnif- 
icent. They, these husky, muscle-bound Titans of raw 
force walked home . . . only thinking, thinking hard. 
Oh, only for one wink from some one, would there be 
a puddle of red horseblood mixed with the human kind. 

But no. We want to win the strike. We wan f to 
win the confidence of the public. 

Tuesday afternoon the little babies of No. I were go- 
ing to the school. They loitered for the school bell to 
summon them. And here come Kozaks. They see the 
little innocents standing on the steps of the school- 
house, their parents on the opposite side of the street. 
What a splendid occasion to start the " Hunkey's " ire. 
Let us charge their babies — that will fetch them to an 
attack upon us. 

They did. But the " Hunkey " even at the supreme 
test of his cool-headedness, refused to flash his knife 
to save his babies from the onrush of the cruel horses' 
hoofs. 

I am relating to you, Mr. Foster, things as they hap- 
pened. You may use my name in connection with your 
charges against the Constabulary. 

Sincerely yours, Rev. A. Kazincy, 

416 Frazier St., Braddock, Pa. 
[122] 




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Governor Sproul paid no attention to Father 
Kazincy's protest, nor did he to a long letter from 
Jas. H. M-aurer, reciting shocking brutalities fully 
authenticated by affidavits — unless it was to multi- 
ply his public endorsements and praises of the State 
Police. 

A favorite method of the Constables was to go 
tearing through the streets (foreign quarter), forc- 
ing pedestrians into whatever houses they happened 
to be passing, regardless of whether or not they 
lived there. Read these two typical affidavits, por- 
traying a double outrage: 

STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA! 

L SS 

COUNTY OF ALLEGHENY J 

Before me, the undersigned authority, personally ap- 
peared John Bodnar, who being duly sworn according to 
law deposes and says that he lives at 542 Gold Way, 
Homestead, Pa., that on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 1919, at 
about 2 P. M. he went to visit his cousin on Fifth 
Avenue, Homestead, Pa.: that he did in fact visit his 
cousin and after leaving the house of his cousin was 
accosted on the street by a member of the State Police 
who commanded him, the deponent, to enter a certain 
house, which house was not known to the deponent ; that 
deponent informed said State Policeman that he, de- 
ponent, did not live in the house indicated by the State 
Policeman; nevertheless, the said State Policeman said, 
11 It makes no difference whether you live in there or 
not, you go in there anyhow " ; thereupon in fear of 
violence deponent did enter the said house, which house 
was two doors away from the house of the cousin of 
deponent; that after a time deponent came out of the 
house into which he had been ordered, thereupon the 

[123] 



same State Policeman returned and ordered deponent 
to re-enter the house aforesaid and upon again being in- 
formed by deponent that he, the deponent, did not live 
in said house, the said State Policeman forthwith ar- 
rested the deponent and brought him to Homestead 
police station, and at a hearing at said station before 
the burgess was fined the sum of nine dollars and sixty- 
five cents, which amount was paid by deponent. 

John Bodnar 
Sworn to and subscribed before me 
this first day of October, 19 19. 
A. F. Kaufman, Notary Public. 

Here is what happened in the house into which 
Bodnar was driven: 

STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA ] 
COUNTY OF ALLEGHENY ] ss - 

Before me, the undersigned authority, personally ap- 
peared Steve Dudash, who being duly sworn according 
to law deposes and says that he resides at 541 E. 5th 
Ave., Homestead, Pa. ; that on Tuesday September 23, 
19 1 9, in the afternoon of said day, his wife, Mary Du- 
dash, was severely scalded, burned, and injured by rea- 
son of a sudden fright sustained when a State Police- 
man forced John Bodnar into the home of the depon- 
ent and his wife, Mary Dudash; that said Mary Du- 
dash, the wife of the deponent, was in a very delicate 
condition at the time of the fright and injury com- 
plained of, caused by the State Police and that on Sun- 
day, Sept. 28, 19 19, following the date in question, 
namely the 23rd, the said Mary Dudash, wife of de- 
ponent, gave birth to a child; that on account of the 
action of the State Police in forcing John Bodnar with 
terror into the home of deponent and his wife, Mary 

[124] 



Dudash, she, the said Mary Dudash, wife of the de- 
pendent, has been rendered very sick and has suffered 
a nervous collapse and is still suffering from the nerv- 
ous shock sustained, on account of the action of the 
State Police, above referred to. 

Steve Dudash 
Sworn to and subscribed before me 
this first day of October, 191 9 
A. F. Kaufman, Notary Public 

When on a mission of terrorism the first thing 
the State Troopers do is to get their horses onto 
the sidewalks, the better to ride down the pedes- 
trians. Unbelievable though it may seem, they ac- 
tually ride into stores and inner rooms. Picture the 
horror a foreign worker and his family, already 
badly frightened, at seeing a mounted policeman 
crashing into their kitchen. The horses are highly 
trained. Said an N. E. A. news dispatch, Sept. 
26th, 1919: 

Horses of the Pennsylvania State Constabulary are 
trained not to turn aside, as a horse naturally will do, 
when a person stands in its way, but to ride straight 
over any one against whom they are directed. Lizzie, 
a splendid black mare ridden by Trooper John A. 
Thorp, on duty at Homestead, uses her teeth as well 
as her heels when in action. Her master will some- 
times dismount, leaving Lizzie to hold a striker with 
her strong jaws, while he takes up the pursuit of others 
on foot. 

If this is thought to be an overdrawn statement, 
read the following affidavit: 

[125] 



Butler, Pa., October 3, 1919 
I, Jacob Sazuta, 

21 Bessemer Ave., 
Lyndora, Pa. 

Commenced work for the Standard Steel Car Com- 
pany in September, 19 13, as laborer. About October 
1 916 was promoted to car fitter in the erection depart- 
ment; in February, 191 9, was then taken and placed as 
a wheel roller, and I worked in this capacity until 
August 6th, 19 19 [the date the steel strike began there]. 

On August 25, after receiving my pay, I was stand- 
ing looking in a store window, when State Trooper No. 
52 rode his horse upon me, THE HORSE STEP- 
PING ON MY LEFT FOOT. Trooper No. 52 
ordered me to move on, BUT AS THE HORSE WAS 
STANDING ON MY FOOT I COULD NOT 
MOVE. He then struck me across the head with his 
club, cutting a gash in the left side of my head that 
took the doctor three stitches to close up the wound. 
After hitting me with his club, he kept chasing me with 
his horse. 

Jacob Sazuta 
Sworn and subscribed before me 
this third day of October, 19 19. 

E. L. Cefreri, Notary Public. 

A few affidavits, and extracts from affidavits, 
taken at random from among the hundreds in pos- 
session of the National Committee, will indicate the 
general conditions prevailing in the several districts: 

Clairton, Pa. 
John Doban, Andy Niski and Mike Hudak were walk- 
ing home along the street when the State Police came 
and arrested the three, making ten holes in Mike 

[126] 



Hudak's head. Were under arrest three days. Union 
bailed them out, $1,000.00 each. 



Butler, Pa., Oct. 3, 1919. 
I, James Torok, 

Storekeeper, 

103 Standard Ave., 
Lyndora, Pa., 

On about August 15, 19 19, I saw State Troopers 
chase a crippled man who could not run as fast as his 
horse, and run him down, the horse bumping him in the 
back with his head, knocked him down. Later three 
men were coming to my store to buy some things; the 
State Troopers ran their horses right on them and 
chased them home. One of the men stopped and said: 
"I have to go to the store," and the Trooper said: 

11 Get to hell out of here, you sons , or I will 

kill you," and started after them again, and the people 
ran home and stayed away from the store. 

James Torok 
Sworn to and subscribed before me this 
3rd day of October, 1919. 

E. L. Peffer, Notary Public. 



Homestead, Pa. 
. . . two State Policemen made a forcible entry into 
the home of deponent, Trachn Yenchenke, at 327 
Third Ave, Homestead, Pa., and came to the place 
where deponent was asleep, kicked him and punched 
him, and handled him with extreme violence and took 
deponent without any explanation, without permitting 
deponent to dress, dragged him half naked from his 
home to waiting automobile and conveyed him against 
his will to the Homestead Police Station. . . . Fined 
$15.10. 

Trachn Yenchenke. 
[127] 



Monessen, Pa. 
. • . Concetta Cocchiara, 8 months advanced in a state 
of pregnancy, was out shopping with her sister. Two 
State Policemen brusquely ordered them home and when 
they did not move fast enough to suit, followed them 
home, forced himself into the house and struck affiant 
with a stick on the head and grabbed her by the hair 
and pulled her from the kitchen and forced her into 
a patrol wagon and took her to the borough jail. . . . 
Sworn to before Henry Fusarini, Notary Public, 
October n, 19 19. 



Newcastle, Pa. 
John Simpel, 

171 1 Morris Ave., 
Newcastle. 

On Sept. 22, about 5.30 P. M. he was walking along 
towards his home on Moravia Street. Hearing shots 
fired he stopped in the middle of the street and was in- 
stantly struck by bullets three times, one bullet going 
through his leg, one through his finger, while the third 
entered his back and went through his body, coming 
out through his abdomen. The shots were fired from 
inside the gates of the Carnegie Steel Company's plant. 
Mr. Simpel believes the shots were fired from a machine 
gun, because of their rapid succession. He fell on the 
ground and lay there for about ten minutes, until he 
was picked up by a young boy. . . . He is now totally 
disabled. He has a wife and a child and is 48 years 
of age. . . . 

Jas. A. Norrington, Secretary. 



Farrell, Pa. 
. . . There were four men killed here, one in a quarrel 
in a boarding house and three by the Cossacks. Half 
a dozen were wounded, one of them a woman. She 

[128] 



was shot in the back by a Cossack, while on her way to 
the butcher shop. . . . 

S. Coates, Secretary. 

Many hundreds of similar cases could be cited. 
In the steel strike a score were killed, almost all on 
the workers' side; hundreds were seriously injured, 
and thousands unjustly jailed. To the State Con- 
stabulary attaches the blame for a large share of 
this tyranny. The effect of their activities was to 
create a condition in Western Pennsylvania, border- 
ing on a reign of terror. Yet it is extremely diffi- 
cult to definitely fasten their crimes upon them. 
No matter how dastardly the outrage, when the Steel 
Trust cracks its whip the local authorities and lead- 
ing citizens come forth with a mass of affidavits, 
14 white-washing " the thuggery in question, and 
usually sufficing to cast serious doubts on the state- 
ments of the few worker witnesses courageous 
enough to raise their voices. What is to be 
thought of the following incident? 

Testifying before the Senate Committee investi- 
gating the strike, Mr. Gompers related how, in an 
organizing campaign in Monessen, Pa. several years 
ago, A. F. of L. organizer Jefferson D. Pierce was 
bludgeoned by Steel Trust thugs, receiving injuries 
that resulted in his death. Mr. Gompers had his 
facts straight. Yet the very next day, Mr. Gary, 
testifying before the same Committee, produced a 
sworn statement from the son of Mr. Pierce contain- 
ing the following assertions : 

I was with my father the night he received his injuries 
in Monessen, Pa., and wish to state very emphatically 

[129] 



that his injury was not caused by any one connected with 
the United States Steel Corporation. On the contrary, 
it was caused by a member of the I. W. W. organization 
from out of town, who was sent there at the time to 
create trouble, as the I. W. W. organization was then 
trying to gain control of the organizing situation. I 
wish again most emphatically to refute Mr. Gompers' 
statement that this injury was caused by some one con- 
nected with the United States Steel Corporation. 

Upon being questioned, Mr. Gary " thought " 
that Mr. Pierce is employed at Worcester, Mass. 
by the American Steel and Wire Company, a subsidi- 
ary of the U. S. Steel Corporation. 

Fortunately, however, in the steel strike the 
photographer secured a proof of State Police bru- 
tality which the most skilled Steel Trust apologists 
cannot explain away — a picture of the typically 
vicious assault upon Mr. R. Dressel, a hotel keeper 
of 532 Dickson St. (foreign quarter), Homestead, 
Pa. I quote from the latter's statement in connec- 
tion therewith: 

I, Rudolph Dressel, of the aforesaid address, do hereby 
make this statement of my own volition and without 
solicitation from any one. That on the 23rd day of 
September I was standing in front of my place of busi- 
ness at the aforesaid address and a friend of mine, 
namely, Adolph Kuehnemund, came to visit and consult 
me regarding personal matters. As I stood as shown in 
the picture above mentioned with my friend, the State 
Constabulary on duty in Homestead came down Dick- 
son St. They had occasion to ride up and down the 
street several times and finally stopped directly in front 
pf me and demanded that I move on, Before I had 

[130] 



time to comply I was struck by the State Policeman. 
(The attitude of said Policeman is plainly shown in the 
aforesaid picture, and his threatening club is plainly 
seen descending towards me.) 

My friend and I then entered my place of business 
and my friend a few minutes afterwards looked out on 
the street over the summer doors. The policeman im- 
mediately charged him and being unable to enter my 
place of business on horseback, dismounted and entered 
into my place of business on foot. 

My friend being frightened at what had happened to 
me retired to a room in the rear of my place of busi- 
ness. The Policeman entered this room, accompanied 
by another State Police, and without cause, reason or 
excuse, struck my friend and immediately thereafter ar- 
rested him. I was personally present at his hearing be- 
fore Burgess P. H. McGuire of the above city, at which 
none of the aforesaid policemen were heard or even pre- 
sent. Burgess asked my friend what he was arrested 
for, and my friend referred to me inasmuch as he him- 
self did not know. The Burgess immediately replied, 
" We have no time to hear your witnesses, ,, and there- 
upon levied a fine of $10.00 and costs upon him. My 
friend having posted a forfeit of $25.00, the sum of 
$15.45 was deducted therefrom. 

The State Constabulary were sent, unasked for, 
into the quiet steel towns for the sole purpose of in- 
timidating the strikers. The following took place 
at the meeting of the Braddock Borough Council, 
October 6 : 

Mr. Verosky: (County detective and council member) 
" Mr. Chairman, the citizens of the borough wish to 
know by whose authority the State Constabulary was 
called into Braddock to take up their quarters here and 

[131] 



to practically relieve the police of their duties, by patrol- 
ling the streets on foot, mounted, and always under 



arms." 



Mr. Holtzman: (President of Council) "I surely do 

not know who called them into town, but were I the 

Burgess, I would make it my business to find out, in 

view of the fact that the Constabulary is neither wanted 

nor needed here." 

Mr. Verosky: "Well, in that case, the Burgess may 

throw some light on the subject." 

Mr. Callahan: (Burgess) " The question comes to me 

as a surprise and I am sure that I don't know by whose 

authority the Constabulary was called in." 

Everything was calm in Braddock until the State 
Police came in. Then the trouble began. It was 
the same nearly everywhere. The arrival of these 
men was always the signal for so-called riots, and 
wholesale clubbing, shooting and jailing of strikers. 

Great praise has been poured upon the State Con- 
stabulary for their supposedly wonderful bravery 
and efficiency, because a few hundred of them, scat- 
tered thinly through a score of towns, have been 
able apparently to overawe many thousands of strik- 
ers. But the credit is undeserved. In strikes they 
always form, in point of actual weight, an insignifi- 
cant part of the armed forces arrayed against the 
strikers. For instance, in a steel town, during the 
strike, there would usually be a dozen or so State 
Police and from 3,000 to 4,000 deputy sheriffs, com- 
pany police, etc. The latter classes of gunmen make 
up the body of the real repressive force; the State 
Police are merely raiders. It is their particularly 
dirty job to harass the enemy; to break the strike 

[132] 



by scientifically bulldozing the strikers in their homes 
and on the streets. Thus they are thrown into the 
limelight, while the company thugs remain in com- 
parative obscurity. 

The State Police feel reasonably sure of their 
skins when carrying on their calculated campaigns 
of terrorism, for behind them are large numbers of 
armed guards of various sorts ready to spring to 
their support at an instant's notice, should the work- 
ers dare to resist them. Besides, they know they 
have carte blanche to commit the greatest excesses, 
since the highest state officials, not to speak of local 
courts and other authorities, give them undivided 
support. They are above the law, when the rights 
of the workers are concerned. Moreover, they re- 
alize fully that they can depend upon trade-union 
leaders to hold the strikers in check from adopting 
measures of retaliation. Few of them are hurt dur- 
ing their depredations. Once in a while, however, 
they drive their victims to desperation and get them- 
selves into trouble. 

For example, a few days after a fight in Farrell, 
Pa., that cost the strikers two dead and a dozen 
seriously wounded, the local secretary there, S. 
Coates, was on his way to Ohio to hold a meeting, 
when the delivery truck upon which he was riding 
overturned, rendering him unconscious. He woke 
up in a Sharon hospital. The six beds adjoining 
his were occupied by Cossacks, injured in the riot 
started by themselves in Farrell. The public knew 
nothing of their injuries, it being the regular thing 
to suppress such facts, in order to surround the 
dreaded Cossacks with a reputation for invulner- 

[133] 



ability. The way the latter " get even " for their 
casualties is to victimize and outrage as many 
workers as they think necessary to balance the score. 
But such methods cannot go on indefinitely. It will 
be marvellous, indeed, if some day the State Constab- 
ulary, with their policy of deliberate intimidation, 
are not the means of causing riots such as this country 
has not yet experienced in labor disputes. Not al- 
ways will the unions be able to hold their men as 
steady in the face of brutal provocation as they did 
in the recent sfeel strike. 

Hand in glove with the Cossacks in their work 
of terrorizing Pennsylvania's steel towns went the 
less skilful but equally vicious company police, gun- 
men, deputy sheriffs, etc., many of whom, ex-service 
men, disgraced their uniforms by wearing them on 
strike duty. Nor were the city police, save for a 
few honorable exceptions here and there, appreciably 
better. As for the police magistrates, almost to a 
man they seconded unquestioningly the work of the 
sluggers. In fact, all the forces of " law and order ' 
in western Pennsylvania, official and unofficial, 
worked together like so many machines — in 
the interest of their powerful master, the Steel 
Trust. 

Many of the armed guards were murderous 
criminals; penitentiary birds scraped together from 
the slums of the great cities to uphold Garyism by 
crushing real Americanism. They took advantage 
of the strike situation and the authority vested in 
them to indulge in an orgy of robbery and thievery. 
Dressed in United States army uniforms and wear- 
ing deputies' badges, they even robbed strikers in 

[134] 



broad daylight on the main streets. And if the lat- 
ter* dared to protest they were lucky not to be beaten 
tfp, jailed and fined for disorderly conduct. The 
strike committees have records of many such cases. 
And worse yet, more than one striker was robbed 
while he was in jail. Liberty bonds and cash disap- 
peared frequently. To lose watches, knives, etc., 
was a common occurrence. 

Picketing was out of the question, although, like 
many other liberties denied the steel strikers, it is 
theoretically permitted under the laws and court rul- 
ings of Pennsylvania. Strikers foolhardy enough 
to attempt it were usually slugged and arrested. 
Even the right to strike was virtually overthrown. 
The practice was for several company and city police, 
without warrants, to seek a man in his home, crowd 
in and demand his return to work. Upon refusal he 
would be arrested and fined from $25 to $100 for 
disorderly conduct. Then he would be offered his 
money back, if he would agree to be a scab. This 
happened not once, but scores, if not hundreds of 
times. Like practices were engaged in almost every- 
where. In Monessen State Police and other " peace 
officers " would regularly round up batches of 
strikers before the mill gates. Those that agreed 
to go to work were set free; the rest were jailed. 
Many were kept overnight in an old, unlighted 
building and threatened from time to time with 
hanging in the morning, if they would not become 
scabs. This was particularly terrifying, as the 
strikers, mainly foreigners knowing little of their 
supposed legal rights, had very good reason to think 
that State Police, as well as armed thugs, would 

[135] 



go to any extreme against them. In Pittsburgh it- 
self, the decisive question asked petty prisoners in 
the police courts was, " Are you working? " Those 
who could show that they were strike-breakers were 
released forthwith; while those who admitted be- 
ing on strike were usually found guilty without 
further questioning. Throughout the whole dis- 
trict, to be a scab was to be a peaceable, law abid- 
ing citizen; to be a striker was criminal. 

The courts put every obstacle in the way of the 
strikers getting justice. In those towns where it 
was possible to get lawyers at all no courtesies were 
extended the representatives of the men. They 
were denied the right of cross-examination; could 
not get the necessary papers for appeals, and in some 
cases were actually ordered out of court. Attorney 
Roe was arrested in McKeesport for attempting to 
confer with a dozen of his clients in a private hall. 
The strikers were held under excessive bail and fined 
shamefully for trivial charges, to disprove which 
they were often denied the right to produce wit- 
nesses. The following quotations from a report by 
J. G. Brown, formerly president of the International 
Union of Timber Workers, who was a general or- 
ganizer in the Pittsburgh district and later director 
of the legal department of the National Committee, 
will give an indication of the situation and some of 
the reasons therefor: 

. . . The next day came the strike. The jails swarmed 
with arrested strikers. This was especially true in the 
Soho district of Pittsburgh, where are located the main 
entrances of the National Tube Works, and the Jones 
#nd Laughlin Company's plants. In the afternoon two 

[136] 



organizers who were walking down the street in this 
section were taken to jail, held without bail on charges 
of being " suspicious persons.' ' Information was given 
to us that only the Supt. of Police had authority to fix 
bail. He could not be located. Indeed, that these men 
were arrested at all was learned only through the 
newspapers. They were not allowed to communicate 
with their friends or attorneys. Attorney Brennon 
eventually found the Chief of Police and went bail 
for the men. 

Deciding to utilize the right of picketing, which the 
laws of the state permit, a group of men were chosen 
for this work, captains assigned and stationed at the 
entrances of the mills in Soho. No sooner had they 
arrived there than they were hustled right on to jail, 
which was already filled to overflowing. Many were 
convicted on disorderly conduct charges; others were 
warned of dire things in store for them, and all were 
advised to return to their work in the mills. 

Many women and young girls were among the vic- 
tims of police brutalities in the Soho district. Lo- 
cated in this section were only city policemen; the 
State Constabulary did not " work " much within the 
city limits. Much wonder was created by the undimin- 
ishing brutality of the Soho police. The Central Labor 
Council of Pittsburgh tried to have the City Council in- 
augurate an investigation of the shameful state of af- 
fairs, but nothing could be done. 

Shortly after the strike was called off the Pittsburgh 
papers carried a story to the effect that the city police- 
men working in the Soho district had been " paid " 
$150 each by the National Tube Co. It was stated 
also that the same men were paid a like amount by the 
Jones and Laughlin Company. This explains, perhaps, 
why justice was so blind in this section. 

On the opposite side of the Monongahela river, where 

[137] 



the Jones and Laughlin Company has other immense 
works the police were equally bad, the police magistrate 
even worse. The Police Commissioner was boss of the 
situation. And now come the Pittsburgh papers with 
the story that this very Commissioner, Peter P. Walsh, 
has made application to be retired from the Pittsburgh 
police force on half pay in order that he might accept 
the appointment as chief of the mill police of the Jones 
and Laughlin Company. The half pay allowance gives, 
according to reports, $1800 per year. The new posi- 
tion Mr. Walsh is to fill is popularly understood to 
carry with it a salary of $5000 per year. . . . The 
Central Labor Council is making an effort to have this 
matter investigated, but without serious hope of success. 

When a labor committee demanded that Mayor 
Babcock of Pittsburgh investigate the situation, the 
honorable gentleman refused. He admitted that 
the action of the steel companies was ill-advised; 
the money should have been given to the pension 
fund, instead of to a few men; however, the matter 
was now past history, and there was nothing to be 
added to the fair name of Pittsburgh by airing it in 
public. The Mayor admitted, though, that he 
would object to having labor unions raise funds to 
pay policemen to favor them during strikes. So 
reason public officials in the steel districts. 

Suppression of the rights of free speech and free 
assembly; gigantic organized campaigns of out- 
lawry by the State Police and armies of selected 
plug-uglies; subornation and intimidation of city, 
county, state and federal officials and police; prosti- 
tution of the courts — these are some of the means 

[138] 



used to crush the strike of the steel workers, and to 
force these over-worked, under-paid toilers still 
deeper into the mire of slavery. And the whole 
monstrous crime was hypocritically committed in the 
name of a militant, ioo per cent. Americanism. 



[i39] 



IX 
EFFORTS AT SETTLEMENT 

THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL CONFERENCE THE 

SENATE COMMITTEE THE RED BOOK THE 

MARGOLIS CASE THE INTERCHURCH WORLD 

MOVEMENT 

Upon October 6 the National Industrial Conference 
opened its sessions in Washington, D. C. This body 
was called together by President Wilson to make an 
effort to solve the pressing labor difficulties confront- 
ing the country, and was the one, pending whose 
deliberations the steel workers had been asked to 
postpone their strike. It was a three-party arrange- 
ment, Capital, Labor and the Public being repre- 
sented. Naturally it was only advisory in character j 
and under the rules adopted all action taken, not 
relating merely to methods of procedure, had to have 
the endorsement of all three sections, each of which 
voted as a unit in accordance with the majority senti- 
ment of its members. 

The Conference met in the midst of a tense situa- 
tion. The steel industry was almost completely 
paralysed; the miners were just about to launch 
their national general strike; the railroaders were 
in a foment of discontent, and many other large and 
important sections of workers were demanding 

[140] 



better conditions. Capital and Labor were arrayed 
against each other as never before. Both appeared 
determined to fight; Capital in a bitter, revengeful 
spirit to oust Labor from the favorable position won 
during the war, and Labor in a decided effort to hold 
what it had and to make more winnings to offset 
the rapidly mounting cost of living. The United 
States seemed upon the brink of an industrial war. 
From the beginning the touchstone of the Con- 
ference, the measure by which all its activities were 
gauged, was the steel strike. It was clear that its 
attitude towards this great issue would settle its 
general policy. This was felt by all parties to the 
Conference, even though some hated the thought. 
The labor delegation, headed by Samuel Gompers, 
precipitated matters by introducing, by previous ar- 
rangement with the National Committee for Organ- 
izing Iron and Steel Workers, the following resolu- 
tion: 

Whereas, The Nation-wide strike now in progress 
in the steel industry of America affects not only the 
men and women directly concerned, but tends to disturb 
the relations between employers and workers through- 
out our industrial life; and 

Whereas, This conference is called for the purpose 
of stabilizing industries and bringing into being a better 
relation between employers and employees; and 

Whereas, Organized Labor wishes to manifest its 
sincere and fair desire to prove helpful in immediately 
adjusting this pending grave industrial conflict; there- 
fore, be it, 

Resolved, That each group comprising this confer- 
ence select two of its number and these six so selected 
to constitute a committee to which shall be referred 

[141] 



existing differences between the workers and employers 
in the steel industry for adjudication and settlement. 
Pending the findings of this committee, this conference 
requests the workers involved to return to work and 
the employers to re-instate them in their former posi- 
tions. 

This resolution provoked a storm of opposition 
from the reactionary employers, who, headed by Mr. 
Gary (ironically seated with John D. Rockefeller, 
Jr., as a representative of the Public) insisted that 
the Conference ignore the steel strike situation al- 
together, its purpose being, according to them, not 
the settlement of existing disputes, but the formula- 
tion of principles and plans which would provide for 
the prevention of such disputes in the future. Fin- 
ally, seeing that if they insisted upon their resolution 
it would wreck the Conference, the workers held it 
in abeyance temporarily and submitted the follow- 
ing: 

The right of wage earners to organize without dis- 
crimination, to bargain collectively, to be represented 
by representatives of their own choosing in negotiations 
and adjustments with employers in respect to wages, 
hours of labor and relations and conditions of employ- 
ment, is recognized. 

Such a mild proposition as this would hardly meet 
with serious opposition in a similar conference in any 
other important country than ours. All over 
Europe it would be far too conservative to fit the 
situation. In England, for example, the British 
Industrial Conference recently adopted the follow- 
ing: 

[142] 



The basis of negotiation between employers and 
work people should, as is presently the case in the chief 
industries of the country, be the full, frank acceptance 
of the employers' organizations on the one hand, and 
trade unions on the other as the recognized organiza- 
tions to speak and act on behalf of their members. 

And just across our border, in Canada, this ad- 
vanced conception was formulated but a few months 
before : 

On the whole we believe the day has passed when 
any employer should deny his employees the right to 
organize. Employers claim that right for themselves 
and it is not denied by the workers. There seems to 
be no reason why the employer should deny like rights 
to those who are employed by him. Not only should 
employees be accorded the right of organizing, but the 
prudent employer will recognize such organization and 
will deal with the duly accredited representatives 
* thereof in all matters relating to the interests of the em- 
ployees when it is fairly established to be representative 
of them all. 

But Mr. Gary and his associates care nothing 
about the reputation of America as a progressive, 
liberty-loving country. They have their preroga- 
tives, and they intend to exercise them, cost what 
it may. They organize as they see fit and pick 
out such representatives as they will; but by virtue 
of their economic strength they deny to their work- 
ers these same rights. So they voted down Labor's 
collective bargaining resolution, and at the same 
time the one providing for a settlement of the steel 
strike. The employers insisted upon absolute rule 
by themselves. 

[143] 



This action discredited the Conference, and sen- 
tenced it to dissolution. By its refusal to meet the 
great steel strike issue the Conference showed that 
it had neither the will nor the power to settle indus- 
trial disputes. Labor, openly denied the funda- 
mental right of organization, could no longer sit 
with it. The workers' representatives, therefore, 
took the only honorable course left to them; they 
withdrew, allowing the whole worthless structure 
to collapse. Said Mr. Gompers in his final speech : 

Gentlemen, I have sung my swan song in this con- 
ference. You have, by your action — the action of the 
employers' group — legislated us out of this conference. 
We have nothing further to submit; and with a feel- 
ing of regret we have not been enabled with a clear 
conscience to remain here longer. We have responsi- 
bilities to employees and workers and those dependent 
upon them. We must fulfill these obligations. 

Thus ingloriously ended the Conference upon 
which the steel workers had been asked to hang all 
their hopes. Even with powerful organizations in- 
tact and with their industry almost entirely at a 
standstill, the latter could get no consideration from 
it. What, then, would have been their fate if they 
had postponed the strike? With their forces shat- 
tered, half of their men being on strike and the 
rest at work thoroughly disgusted, they would have 
been helpless and unable to strike in any event. 
They would have been absolutely at the mercy of 
the employers. And any one who may imagine that 
the latter would have done anything short of giving 
the steel workers their coup de grace at the Confer- 

[i44] 



ence is an optimist indeed. The steel strike was a 
clean fight and an honorable defeat for Labor. Its 
bad effects will soon wear off. But it would have 
been a ruinous calamity, with ineradicable harm, 
had the strike been postponed for the sake of the ill- 
fated Industrial Conference. 

Pursuant to a resolution adopted by the Senate 
on September 23, in the white heat of the strike ex- 
citement, the Committee on Education and Labor 
was instructed to investigate the steel strike and to 
report back to the Senate as soon as possible. Ac- 
cordingly this Committee held sittings in Washing- 
ton and Pittsburgh, hearing about one hundred wit- 
nesses all told. Its active members were Senators 
Kenyon (Chairman), McKellar, Walsh (Mass.), 
Sterling and Phipps. 

For the workers Samuel Gompers, John Fitz- 
patrick, M. F. Tighe and many organizers and 
strikers testified, setting forth in detail the griev- 
ances and demands of the men. For the steel com- 
panies came the usual crop of strike-breakers and 
company officials, pliable city authorities and business 
men from the steel towns. The star witness was 
Judge Gary, who presented practically the entire case 
for the whole steel industry. It is noteworthy that 
with the exception of one minor hothead, the so- 
called " independents " made no defense before the 
committee. They left it all to their master, the 
United States Steel Corporation. 

Mr. Gary was a good witness. Not for him were 
the antiquated blusterings of a " divine-right " Baer 
or a " public-be-damned " Vanderbilt. He used the 

[145] 



modern method, — a mass of silky hypocrisies and 
misrepresentations for the public, to cover up the 
mailed fist he has for his workers. He was suave, 
oily, humble, obliging, persuasive, patriotic. He 
pictured the steel industry as a sort of industrial 
heaven and the U. S. Steel Corporation as a benef- 
icent institution, leading even the trade-union move- 
ment in reform work. 

Inasmuch as Mr. Gary's peculiar notions of the 
" open shop," minority rule by the unions, etc., set 
forth afresh by him at the strike hearings, are dis- 
cussed quite generally throughout this book, there 
is no need to review them again here. We will note 
his testimony no more than to give the facts of the 
death of Mrs. Fannie Sellins, of^ whose murder he 
was so anxious to clear the Steel Trust. 

Mrs. Fannie Sellins was an organizer for the 
United Mine Workers of America, stationed in the 
notorious, anti-union Black Valley district along the 
Allegheny river. An able speaker, and possessed 
of boundless courage, energy, enthusiasm and ideal- 
ism, she was a most effective worker. Due largely 
to her efforts many thousands of miners and miscel- 
laneous workers in this hard district were organized. 
She was the very heart of the local labor movement, 
which ranked second to none in Pennsylvania for 
spirit and progress. When the steel campaign be- 
gan, Mrs. Sellins threw herself wholeheartedly into 
it. She worked indefatigably. More than any 
other individual she was responsible for the union- 
ization of the big United States Steel Corpora- 
tion mills at Vandergrift, Leechburgh and New 
Kensington, as well as those of the so-called inde- 

[i 4 6] 



pendent Allegheny and West Penn Steel Companies 
at Brackenridge. The results secured by her will 
compare favorably with those of any other organizer 
in the whole campaign. 

By her splendid work in behalf of the toilers 
Mrs. Sellins gained the undying hatred of the un- 
tamed employers in the benighted Black Valley dis- 
trict. Open threats were made to " get " her. 
The opportunity came on August 26, 19 19, when 
she was deliberately murdered under the most brutal 
circumstances. 

The miners of the Allegheny Coal and Coke Com- 
pany were on strike at West Natrona. The mine 
is situated in the mill yard of the Allegheny Steel 
Company and furnishes fuel for that concern. All 
was going peacefully when a dozen drunken deputy 
sheriffs on strike duty, led by a mine official, suddenly 
rushed the pickets, shooting as they came. Joseph 
Strzelecki fell, mortally wounded. Mrs. Sellins, 
standing close by, rushed first to get some children out 
of danger. Then she came back to plead with the 
deputies, who were still clubbing the prostrate Strze- 
lecki, not to kill him. What happened then is told 
in the New Majority (Chicago) of September 20: 

, the mine official, snatched a club and 



felled the woman to the ground. 

This was not on company ground, but just outside 
the fence of a friend of Mrs. Sellins. 

She rose and tried to drag herself toward the gate. 

— shouted : " Kill that 1 " 

Three shots were fired, each taking effect. 

She fell to the ground, and cried: " Give her 

another ! " 

[147] 



One of the deputies, standing over the motionless and 
silent body, held his gun down and, without averting 
his face, fired into the body that did not move. 

An auto truck, in waiting, was hurried to the scene 
and the body of the old miner thrown in; then Mrs. 
Sellins was dragged by the heels to the back of the car. 
Before she was placed in the truck, a deputy took a 
cudgel and crushed in her skull before the eyes of the 
throng of men, women and children, who stood in 

powerless silence before the armed men. Deputy 

picked up the woman's hat, placed it on his head, danced 
a step, and said to the crowd: "I'm Mrs. Sellins 
now." 

Thus perished noble Fannie Sellins: shot in the 
back by so-called peace officers. And she 49 years 
old, a grandmother, and mother of a boy killed in 
France, fighting to make the world safe for de- 
mocracy. 

Many people witnessed this horrible murder. 
The guilty men were named openly in the newspapers 
and from a hundred platforms. Yet no one was 
ever punished for the crime. Witnesses were 
spirited away or intimidated, and the whole matter 
hushed up in true Steel Trust fashion. A couple 
of deputies were arrested; but they were speedily 
released on smaller bonds than those often set for 
strikers arrested for picketing. Eventually they 
were freed altogether. 

The killing of Mrs. Sellins, right in the teeth of 
the strike as it was, lent much bitterness to the gen- 
eral situation. Rightly or wrongly, the steel work- 
ers, almost to a man, felt that this devoted woman 
was a martyr to their cause. 

[148] 




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Upon November 8, the Senate. Committee, having 
completed its hearings, made public its report. 
This document is a strange mixture of progressive 
and reactionary principles. In some respects, es- 
pecially where it grants, however confusedly, the 
right of collective bargaining and the eight hour 
day, it is just and meets the situation; but in other 
respects it is so unfair to the workers' cause as to 
be grotesque. For one thing it shoulders upon the 
unions the entire responsibility for the failure to 
postpone the strike, choosing to disregard com- 
pletely the clearly established fact that the steel 
companies were discharging men so fast that for the 
unions it was a case of strike or perish. In fact, 
the report ignores altogether the bitter grievance of 
men being discharged for union membership. Mr. 
Gary had said that this practice was not engaged in, 
and that apparently settled it so far as the Committee 
was concerned, — the testimony of dozens of victim- 
ized workers (with thousands more available) to the 
contrary notwithstanding. Other sins of the Steel 
Trust, the suppression of free speech and free as- 
sembly, etc., were passed over lightly; but the alleged 
virtues of its housing and welfare plans were very 
highly lauded. 

Nowhere are the workers more ruthlessly robbed 
and exploited by their employers than in the steel 
industry. Speaking recently in Brooklyn on the sub- 
ject of profiteering, Mr. Basil Manly, formerly 
Joint Chairman of the National War Labor Board, 
cited Page 367 of the Treasury report as showing 
one steel company "earning" $14,549,952 in 1917 
on a capital of $5,000, or a profit of 290,999 per 

[i49] 



cent. As the department conveniently suppresses 
all details, it is impossible to learn the name of this 
company or how it made such fabulous profits. On 
the same page appeared another steel company with 
a profit rate of 20,180 per cent. Speaking of the 
United States Steel Corporation's returns, which of 
course were garbled so that no outsider could under- 
stand them, Mr. Manly said: 

For this reason I am unable to tell you, on the basis 
of the Treasury Department's figures, what the net in- 
come of the Steel Corporation is, but on the basis of its 
own published report I can tell you that in two years, 
1916 and 1917, the net profits of the Steel Corporation, 
after payment of interest on bonds and after making al- 
lowance for all charges growing out of the installation of 
special war facilities, amounted to $888,931,511. This 
is more by $20,000,000 than the total capital stock of 
the Steel Corporation (which is $868,583,600). In 
other words, in 1916 and 191 7 every dollar of the 
capital stock of the Steel Corporation was paid for in 
net profits. In this connection it should be remembered 
that when the Steel Corporation was formed its entire 
$500,000,000 worth of common stock represented noth- 
ing but water. 

The other steel companies did as well or better, 
proportionately. W. Jett Lauck, acting on behalf 
of the railroad workers, submitted figures to the 
United States Railroad Labor Board (A. P. dis- 
patches May 19, 1920) showing that during the 
years 19 16-18 the Bethlehem Steel Corporation 
" earned " average annual profits of $29,000,000, or 
six times its pre-war average. In 19 16 its profits 
amounted to 146 per cent, on its capital stock. Our 

[150] 



Johnstown friend, the Cambria Steel Company, in 
1916-17 cleaned up $50,000,000 on $45,000,000 
capital stock; while the Lackawanna, Republic, Col- 
orado Fuel and Iron, Jones and Laughlin, Crucible, 
etc., companies made similar killings. 

As against useless, non-producing drones getting 
these millions, the great mass of workers actually 
operating the industry were receiving the beggarly 
wages of from 42 to 48 cents per hour. They had 
received no increase for a year before the strike, not- 
withstanding the skyrocketing cost of living. Yet 
the Senate Committee could discover no discontent at 
this condition nor see any injustice in it. Upon page 
10 of its report appears the startling statement that 
" The question of wages is not involved in this con- 
troversy.'' Forty-two cents per hour would hardly 
buy cigars for these* smug, well-fed gentlemen; still 
they would have us conclude that it is enough for a 
steel worker to raise a family upon. 

The fact is, of course, that an increase in wages 
was a cardinal demand of the strikers, even though 
the Senate Committee did not get to learn of it. 1 
And so great was the steel workers' need for more 

1 There seemed to be many important things of which this com- 
mittee had never heard. For instance, when in my testimony I 
referred to Lester F. Ward, Senator Sterling innocently inquired 
who he was. He had apparently never even heard of this emi- 
nent American sociologist, who was perhaps the greatest scholar 
ever born in the western hemisphere, and whose name is honored 
by scientific minds the world over. And what makes Senator 
Sterling's ignorance the more inexcusable is that he was actually 
holding office in Washington at the same time that Professor 
Ward was carrying on his brilliant studies in that very city. For 
one who stresses so much his ioo per cent. Americanism as does 
the Senator it is indeed a sad showing not to be familiar with 
this great native product. 

[151] 



money that the strike had scarcely ended when the 
United States Steel Corporation, followed soon 
after by the " independents," granted .its lesser 
skilled help 10 per cent, increase in wages, and 
promised u an equitable adjustment " to the widely 
advertised small minority of highly paid men. 

Part of the strike-breaking strategy of the Steel 
Trust was to alienate public sympathy from the 
strike by denouncing it as an incipient revolution 
which had to be put down at all costs. Public opin- 
ion was already violently inflamed against everything 
savoring no matter how slightly of radicalism, and 
it was not difficult for the re-actionary newspapers 
to make the steel strike unpopular, even as they had, 
under various pretexts, the movements of the miners 
and railroad men of the period. One weapon they 
used extensively against the steel strike was an al- 
most forgotten pamphlet, " Syndicalism," written by 
Earl C. Ford and myself eight years ago. 

Throughout the hearings the investigating sen- 
ators went along with this Steel Trust propaganda, 
which was not so surprising considering the fact 
that of the five active committee men, one was a 
steel magnate, and three others typical Bourbons. 
By playing up the " little red book " they syste- 
matically fed the newspapers with the sensation- 
alism they wanted and which the steel companies de- 
sired them to get. I was called before the Com- 
mittee and gruffly ordered to express my opinion on 
the doctrines in the booklet. In reply, I stated that 
the steel movement had been carried on according 
to the strictest trade-union principles. It was over- 
seen by the National Committee, consisting of 

[152] 



twenty-four presidents of large international unions. 
As secretary of this committee I had necessarily 
worked under the close scrutiny of these men and 
dozens of their organizers — not to speak of the 
highest officials in the American Federation of 
Labor. Yet none of these trade unionists, keen 
though they be to detect and condemn unusual prac- 
tices and heresy in the ranks, had found fault with 
the character of my work. Nor could the crew of 
detectives and stool pigeons of the steel companies 
and Department of Justice, who had dogged my 
footsteps for a year past, cite a single word said, a 
thing done, or a line written by me in the entire cam- 
paign which would not measure up to most rigid 
trade-union standards. I contended that my private 
opinions were immaterial as they did not and could 
not enter into the organizing work or the strike. 
But the nation-wide head hunt of the radicals was 
on in full cry, and the Senators had a good blood 
scent. They would follow it to the end. They in- 
sisted that I express my opinion upon the wage sys- 
tem, the state, morality, patriotism, marriage, etc. 
Finally, in a last effort to protect the interests of the 
2,000,000 men, women and childen affected by the 
strike, I stated that if the vulture press, which was 
bound to misrepresent what I said, was removed 
from the room, I would be glad to oblige the Sena- 
tors with a frank expression of my views upon any 
subject. But this simple fairness to the steel work- 
ers and their families they denied. The newspapers 
were clamoring for red meat, and the Senators 
seemed determined they should have it. Having 
made my protest and my prediction, I was compelled 

[153] 



to yield; but the first newspapers on the streets 
proved the soundness of my fears. My answers 
were garbled and twisted against both the steel move- 
ment and me. 

Then there was the Margolis case. I charge that 
to be a deliberate frameup against the steel strike. 
To prove the Steel Trust's contention that the strike 
was a desperate revolutionary coup, engineered by 
men seeking to destroy our civilization generally, 
somewhat more was required than merely an eight 
year old booklet. The thing had to be brought 
down to date and a far-reaching plot constructed. 
Hence the Senate Committee dragged in Mr. 
Margolis and made him a scapegoat. Mr. Margolis 
is a well known Anarchist attorney of Pittsburgh. 
He has the reputation of having served ably as 
counsel for several trade-union organizations, and 
has a wide circle of acquaintances among labor men. 
The Senate Committee selected him as the man who 
ha^d organized, with my hearty support and co-opera- 
tion, the real force behind the strike, the I. W. W.'s, 
Anarchists and Bolshevists. 

Now the fact is that Mr. Margolis had nothing 
whatever to do, officially or unofficially, with the 
policies or management of either the organizing cam- 
paign or the strike. He had no connection with the 
Strike committee; nor did he ever even speak at a 
union meeting of steel workers during the whole 
movement in question. If he wrote an article in 
some radical paper, or spoke to a meeting of Russian 
workmen in Youngstown, endorsing the strike, as is 
said, he did it purely as an individual sympathizer 
acting upon his own initiative. Mr. Margolis freely 

[iS4] 



stated this on the stand, and every union official in 
Pittsburgh knew it to be the case. So did the in- 
vestigating Senators; but it the better served their 
purpose to enlarge upon Mr. Margolis' activities, 
in the hope that his radical reputation would lend 
color to the plot theory which they were laboring 
so hard to establish, and which was so advantageous 
to the Steel Trust. 

In their final report the Senators continued their 
plot " evidence " and insinuations, so persistently 
worked up all through their hearings. They ig- 
nored highly important testimony tending to put 
the movement in its right light as a strictly trade- 
union affair, and gave prominence to everything to 
the contrary. They elevated unheard-of I. W. W.'s 
into powerful strike leaders and surrounded the most 
ordinary comings and goings with revolutionary 
mystery. Where they lacked facts they cast sus- 
picion, leaving a vicious daily press to draw its own 
conclusions. 

Although they expressed great concern for the 
sufferings of the public in strikes, and advocated the 
establishment of an industrial tribunal to prevent 
them in the future, the worthy Senators, nevertheless, 
recommended no means to end the steel strike. So 
far as they were concerned, apparently they were 
willing to have the steel strike fought to a conclu- 
sion. At one of the Senate Committee hearings, 
John Fitzpatrick, Chairman of the National Com- 
mittee, agreed to arbitration. But later Mr. Gary 
gave an emphatic " No " to this proposition. Mr. 
Gary's wishes usually had decisive weight with the 
Senators, so the matter was settled. 

[155] 



On October 1-3, 19 19, a national conference 
called by the Industrial Relations Department of 
the Interchurch World Movement met at the Hotel 
Pennsylvania in New York and adopted a resolution 
providing for a full investigation of the steel strike, 
then a burning public question. Under the terms 
of this resolution the Industrial Relations Depart- 
ment set up an independent Commission of In- 
quiry, composed of representative churchmen from 
all over the country who should be responsible for 
carrying out the investigation. This Commission 
consisted of Bishop Francis J. McConnell (Meth- 
odist), Chairman, Dr. Daniel A. Poling (Evangel- 
ical), vice-Chairman, Dr. John McDowell (Presby- 
terian), Mrs. Fred Bennett (Board of Foreign Mis- 
sions), Dr. Nicholas Van Der Pyl (Congrega- 
tional), Dr. Alva W. Taylor (Disciples), and Mr. 
Geo. W. Coleman (Baptist). 

In order to commit the investigation of technical 
data to the hands of trained men, the Industrial 
Relations Department obtained the services of the 
Bureau of Industrial Research, New York, which, 
besides its own researches, obtained the co-operation 
of various other scientific agencies and organized a 
staff of field workers whose principal members were: 
Mr. George Soule, Mr. David J. Saposs, Miss 
Marian D. Savage, Mr. Marion K. Wisehart and 
Mr. Robert Littell. A member of the Bureau of In- 
dustrial Research, Mr. Heber Blankenhorn, had 
charge of the field work and later acted as Secretary 
to the Commission of Inquiry, which held hearings in 
Pittsburgh, Chicago, and other steel centres. 
TThe Interchurch World Movement, representing 

J [156] 



as it does the organized Protestant millions of 
America, is a conservative and respectable body, if 
there is such in this country. Yet when it stepped 
upon the toes of the Steel Trust by starting the in- 
vestigation it found itself soon classed among the 
revolutionaries. Persistent rumors were sent broad- 
cast, and even newspaper stories, to the effect that 
the Commission's investigators were " Bolsheviks " 
and that the Interchurch World Movement was per- 
meated with " anarchists." This hampered the 
work greatly, especially among employers. Finally 
a threat of legal action was necessary against a 
large commercial organization which had circulated 
the rumors officially. It eventually retracted in full. 
As for the workers, they gave the fullest co-opera- 
tion to the investigation. 

Impressed by the scientific methods and apparent 
desire to get at the truth of the strike situation mani- 
fested in the Interchurch investigation — which 
stood in striking contrast to the slipshod, haphazard 
system, " red " mania, and violent partiality towards 
the steel companies shown by the Senate Committee, 
— ■ the strike leaders decided to ask the Commission 
to undertake a settlement of the strike by mediation, 
which the Commission had the power to do under 
the resolution creating it. The workers' representa- 
tives felt that no stone should be left unturned to 
get a settlement, and that if the powerful Interchurch 
movement stirred in their behalf possibly Mr. Gary 
would be dislodged from his position. 

Consequently, John Fitzpatrick, Chairman of the 
National Committee, put before Mr. Blankenhorn a 
plan for the settlement of the strike by mediation. 

[157] 



Mr. Blankenhorn felt, however, that it might be 
better to recommend that the Commission move inde- 
pendently, rather than as merely representing the 
strikers, and submitted the following plan, which 
was adopted by the Commission: 

i. To mediate in behalf of all the steel workers, both 
those on strike and those who had gone back to work. 

2. That the purpose of the mediation should be to 
establish a new deal in the steel industry rather than 
merely to end the strike. 

3. That the ending of the strike should be arranged 
solely with a view to giving the new deal the best pos- 
sible chance. 

On December 1, the National Committee for Or- 
ganizing Iron and Steel Workers met and formally 
accepted this proposition of mediation. What hap- 
pened next is told in an official statement to the writer 
of this book: 

On December 5 a committee from the Commission, 
consisting of Bishop McConnell, Dr. Poling and Dr. 
McDowell, called on Mr. Gary with the purpose of, 
first, ascertaining if he would accept their office as 
mediators; next, of proposing their plan of mediation 
and pressing the acceptance of it by the employers; and, 
finally, of ordering the men back to work, the strike 
leaders to step out of the situation, and the Commis- 
sion to set up a permanent mediation body to bring 
about a conference between employers and employees 
in the steel industry. There was the feeling in the 
Commission that extraordinary concessions had been 
made by the leaders of the strike and that any reasons 
advocated by the employers for not accepting the 
mediation plan would have to be weighty. 

[158] 



Mr. Gary received the Commission courteously and 
after minutely cross-examining them concerning the 
" anonymous " report of the presence of " Bolsheviks " 
among them, he heard the Commission to the extent of 
learning the first step in their proposal. He made his 
reply immediately, an absolute refusal of arbitration or 
mediation. The Commission therefore never had any 
opportunity to present the authorized acceptance of the 
mediation plan by the other side and in no sense con- 
veyed to Mr. Gary the extent of the concessions which 
the strikers were then willing to make. Mr. Gary, 
however, clearly understood that acceptance of the 
mediation plan would mean that the men would all 
return to work at once. 

Mr. Gary based his refusal on the grounds that any 
dealings which in any way involved representatives of 
the men then on strike would be an acceptance of the 
closed shop, sovietism, and the forcible distribution of 
property. Mr. Gary said that if the Commission rep- 
resented the men who had gone back to work, those 
men were content; if the Commission represented the 
men who had not gone back to work, those men are 
nothing but red radicals whom the plants did not 
want anyway. He said that there was absolutely no 
issue for discussion with the U. S. Steel Corporation. 

The Commission presented its view-point on the ad- 
visability of mediation at great length and with insist- 
ence. Mr. Gary did not in any respect modify his 
immediate decision. 

The Commission felt it necessary therefore to drop 
the plan and transmitted the following to the National 
Committee : 

December 6, 19 19 
Memorandum for Mr. Fitzpatrick: 

The independent Commission of Inquiry, instituted 
by the Interchurch World Movement to investigate the 

[159] 



steel strike, received on December 2 a communication 
marked " confidential," dealing with an official action 
taken by the National Committee for Organizing Iron 
and Steel Workers, signed by Mr. Fitzpatrick and Mr. 
Foster. 

On December 5, members of the Commission in- 
formally conversed with Mr. Gary for two hours, pro- 
posing to plan a new basis of relations in the steel in- 
dustry, with an ending of the strike best calculated 
to further better relations. They offered to act as 
mediators both on behalf of the men still on strike, 
whose leaders were to order them back and then step out 
of the situation, and on behalf of still dissatisfied men 
who had nevertheless returned to work. 

Mr. Gary refused to confer with these representa- 
tives of the churches as mediators in behalf of any 
interests represented by you in the strike, on the ground 
that the men still out were Bolshevist radicals who were 
not wanted in the mills and who would not be taken 
back. 

And as to mediating in behalf of any other interests, 
Mr. Gary said* that the men were contented and that 
" there is no issue." 

I am requested to communicate the above information 
to you by the Chairman of the Commission of Inquiry. 

Very truly yours, 
H. Blankenhorn. 

At the time this book goes to press the findings 
and recommendations of the Commission have not 
yet been made public. 

This made the sixth attempt of the National 
Committee to settle the steel controversy — not to 
mention the individual effort of the Amalgamated 
Association. They were : ( 1 ) The letter from Mr. 

[160] 



Gompers to Mr. Gary requesting a conference; 
(2) the visit to his office of the National Committee 
conference committee, equipped with the power to 
set a strike date; (3) the appeal to President Wilson 
to arrange a conference; (4) Organized Labor's 
resolution in the National Industrial Conference to 
have that body select an arbitration board; (5) The 
offer of arbitration by John Fitzpatrick while testify- 
ing before the Senate Committee; and, (6) the 
Interchurch mediation incident. 

But they were all futile. Mr. Gary's policy is 
the time-honored one of all tyrants, rule or ruin. 
The unions had no option but to fight, and this they 
did to the best of their ability. 



[161] 



X 

THE COURSE OF THE STRIKE 

PITTSBURGH DISTRICT — THE RAILROAD MEN 

CORRUPT NEWSPAPERS CHICAGO DISTRICT 

FEDERAL TROOPS AT GARY — YOUNGSTOWN DIS- 
TRICT THE AMALGAMATED ASSOCIATION 

CLEVELAND — THE ROD AND WIRE MILL STRIKE 

THE BETHLEHEM PLANTS BUFFALO AND 

LACKAWANNA — WHEELING AND STEUBENVILLE 

PUEBLO JOHNSTOWN MOB RULE THE 

END OF THE STRIKE. 

Although the Steel strike was national in scope 
and manifested the same general, basic tendencies 
everywhere, nevertheless it differed enough from 
place to place to render necessary some indication of 
particular events in the various districts in order to 
convey a clear conception of the movement as a 
whole. It is the purpose of this chapter to point out 
a few of these salient features in the several locali- 
ties and to draw some lessons therefrom. 

In the immediate Pittsburgh district, due to the 
extreme difficulties under which the organizing work 
was carried on and the strike inaugurated, the shut- 
down was not so thorough as elsewhere. Consider- 
able numbers of men, notably in the skilled trades, 
remained at work, and the mills limped along, at 

[162] 



least pretending to operate. This was exceedingly 
bad, Pittsburgh being the strategic centre of the 
strike, as it is of the industry, and the companies 
were making tremendous capital of the fact that the 
mills there were still producing steel. Accordingly, 
the National Committee left no stone unturned to 
complete the tie-up, already 75 per cent, effective. 
But under the circumstances, with meetings banned 
and picketing prohibited, it was out of the question 
to reach directly the men who had stayed at work. 
The key to the situation was in the hands of the 
railroad men. 

Operating between the various steel plants and 
connecting them up with the main lines, there are 
several switching roads, such as the Union Railroad 
and the McKeesport and Monongahela Connecting 
Lines. They are the nerve centers of the local steel 
industry. If they could be struck the mills would 
have to come to a stand-still. The National Com- 
mittee immediately delegated organizers to investi- 
gate the situation. These reported that the body of 
the men in the operating departments were organ- 
ized; that they had no contracts with the steel com- 
panies, and that they were ready for action, but 
awaiting co-operation from their respective national 
headquarters. 

Consequently, the National Committee arranged 
a conference in Washington with responsible repre- 
sentatives of the Brotherhoods and laid the situation 
before them. In reply they stated that their policy 
was strictly to observe their contracts wherever 
they had such, and that their men would be 
forbidden to do work around the mills not done 

[163] 



by them prior to the strike. It was up to the 
men on the non-contract roads and yards to decide 
for themselves about joining the strike. We in- 
formed them then that the situation was such, with 
the men scattered through many locals, that merely 
leaving it up to them was insufficient; it would be 
impossible for them to act together without direct 
aid and encouragement from their higher officials. 
We made the specific request that each of the or- 
ganizations send a man into Pittsburgh to take a 
strike vote of the men in question, who are all em- 
ployees of the steel companies. They took the mat- 
ter under advisement; but nothing came of it, al- 
though long afterwards, when the opportune moment 
had passed, organizer J. M. Patterson of the Rail- 
way Carmen (also of the Trainmen) was authorized 
to take a strike vote. Thus was lost the chance to 
close down these strategic switching lines and with 
them, in all likelihood, several big mills in the most 
vital district in the entire steel industry. 

Throughout the strike zone general disappoint- 
ment was expressed by the steel workers at the ap- 
parent lack of sympathy with their cause shown by 
the officials of the Brotherhoods. The steel 
workers, bitterly oppressed for a generation and 
fighting desperately towards the light in the face of 
unheard-of opposition, turned instinctively for aid 
to their closely related, powerfully organized fellow 
workers, the railroad men. And the latter could 
easily have lent them effective, if not decisive assist- 
ance without violating a contract or in any way en- 
dangering their standing. It was not to be expected 
that the trunk line men, working as they were under 

[i6 4 ] 



government agreements, would refuse to haul the 
scab steel; but there were many other ways, perfectly 
legitimate under current trade-union practice and 
ethics, in which help could have been given; yet it 
was not. From Youngstown and elsewhere the rail- 
road men who did go on strike in the mill 
yards complained with bitterness that they were 
neglected and denied strike benefits, and that the 
rule that no road man should do work around the 
mills not customary before the strike was flagrantly 
violated. Usually the rank and file were strongly 
disposed to assist the hard-pressed steel workers, and 
they could have everywhere wonderfully stiffened 
the strike, but the necessary encouragement and co- 
operation from the several headquarters was lack- 
ing. Truth demands that these unpleasant things 
be set down. Labor can learn and progress only 
through a frank acknowledgment and discussion of 
its weaknesses, mistakes and failures. 

In addition to all their other handicaps the Pitts- 
burgh district strikers had to contend with a par- 
ticularly treacherous local press. Everywhere our 
daily papers are newspapers only by courtesy of a 
misapplied term. They are sailing under false 
colors. Pretending to be purveyors of unbiased ac- 
counts of current happenings, they are in reality 
merely propaganda organs, twisting, garbling and 
suppressing facts and information in the manner best 
calculated to further the interests of the employing 
class. The whole newsgathering and distributing 
system is a gigantic mental prostitution. Conse- 
quently, considering the issues involved, it was not 
surprising to see the big daily papers take such a de- 

[165] 



cided stand against the steel workers. Everywhere 
in steel districts the papers were bad enough, but 
those in the Pittsburgh district outstripped all the 
rest. They gave themselves over body and soul to 
the service of the Steel Trust. 

From the first these Pittsburgh papers were 
violently antagonistic to the steel workers. Every 
sophistry uttered by Mr. Gary to the effect that the 
strike was an effort to establish the " closed shop," a 
bid for power, or an attempt at revolution, the 
papers echoed and re-echoed ad nauseum. They 
played up the race issue, virtually advising the Amer- 
icans to stand together against the foreigners who 
were about to overwhelm them. They painted the 
interests of the country as being synonymous with 
those of the steel companies and tried to make 
Americanism identical with scabbery. For them no 
further proof of one's patriotism was needed than 
to go back to the mills. Every clubbing of strikers 
was the heroic work of the law-abiding against reck- 
less mobs. Strike " riots M were manufactured out 
of whole cloth. For instance, when the senators in- 
vestigating the strike were visiting the Homestead 
mills, a couple of strike-breakers quarreling with 
each other, several blocks away, fired a shot. An 
hour later screaming headlines told the startled popu- 
lace of Pittsburgh that " STRIKERS SHOOT AT 
SENATORS " and " MOB ATTACKS SENATE 
COMMITTEE." Even the stand-pat senators had 
to protest that this was going it too strong. 

In revenge for an alleged dynamiting in Donora, 
Pa., the authorities swooped down upon the union 
headquarters, arrested 101 strikers present, including 

[166} 



organizer Walter Hodges, and charged them with 
the crime. Since there was not a shred of evidence 
against the accused, they were all eventually dis- 
charged. Then the Donora Herald, which forever 
yelped that the organizers advocated violence, had 
this to say : 

One of the reasons we have sedition preached in 
America is because we have grand juries like that at 
Washington (Pa.) this week which ignored the dyna- 
miting cases. Possibly the biggest mistake of all was 
made in not using rifles at the time instead of turn- 
ing the guilty parties over to the very sensitive mercies 
of the grand jury. 

But the journalistic strike-breaking master-stroke 
was an organized effort to stampede the men back 
to work by minimizing the strike's effectiveness. 
First the papers declared that only a few thousands 
of Pittsburgh's steel workers went out. Then they 
followed this for weeks with stories of thousands of 
men flocking back to the mills. Full page advertise- 
ments begged the men to go back; while flaming 
headlines told us that " MEN GO BACK TO 
MILLS," " STEEL STRIKE WANING," 
11 MILLS OPERATING STRONGER," " MORE 
MEN GO BACK TO WORK," etc. It became a 
joke, but the patient Pittsburgh people couldn't see 
it. Said Wm. Hard in the Metropolitan for Feb- 
ruary, 1920: 

" Mr. Foster," I said, " I am going to be perfectly 
frank with you. I know your striked a fizzle of 
course, but I know more. I not only take pains to 

[167] 



read the telegraphic dispatches of the news from the 
managers of the steel mills, but I keep the clippings. 
I have the history of your strike in cold print. Hardly 
anybody struck anyhow, in most places, except some 
foreigners; and then they began at once to go back in 
thousands and thousands and new thousands every day 
for months. If you claim there were 300,000 strikers, 
I don't care. I've counted up the fellows that went 
back to work, and IVe totalled them up day by day. 
They're a little over 4,800,000. So you're pretty far 
behind." 

But despite everything — the suppression of free 
speech and free assembly, Cossack terrorism, official 
tyranny, prostitution of the courts, attacks from the 
lying press, and all the rest of it — the steel workers 
in the immediate Pittsburgh district (comprising the 
towns along the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers 
from Apollo to Monessen) made a splendid fight. 
The very pressure seemed to hold them the better to- 
gether. Their ranks were never really broken, the 
strike being weakened only by a long, costly wearing- 
away process. The stampede back to work, so 
eagerly striven for by the employers, did not ma- 
terialize. In the beginning of the strike the Pitts- 
burgh district was the weakest point in the battle 
line ; at the end it was one of the very strongest. 



The Chicago district struck very well, but it 
weakened earlier than others. This was because the 
employers scored a break-through at Indiana Harbor 
and Gary, particularly the latter place, which shat- 
tered the whole line. 

Gary, the great western stronghold of the United 

[168] 



States Steel Corporation, was the storm-center of the 
Chicago district at all times. Hardly had the or- 
ganization campaign begun in 191 8, when the Gary 
Tribune bitterly assailed the unions, accusing them of 
advocating evasion of the draft, discouragement of 
liberty bond sales, and general opposition to the war 
program. These lies were run in a full page edi- 
torial in English, and repeated in a special eight page 
supplement containing sixteen languages, a half page 
to each. Many thousands of copies were scattered 
broadcast. Other attacks in a similar vein followed. 
It was a foul blast straight from the maw of the 
Steel Trust. Incidentally it created a situation 
which shows how the steel men control public opin- 
ion. 

The new unions immediately boycotted the Tri- 
bune. Result : the Gary Post, somewhat friendly in- 
clined, doubled its circulation at once. The Post 
then became more friendly; whereupon, it is alleged, 
a leading banker called the editor to his office and 
told him that if he did not take a stand against the 
unions his credit would be stopped, which would have 
meant suspension within the week. That very day 
the Post joined the Tribune's campaign of abuse. 
Apparently the Post's youthful editor had learned a 
new wrinkle in journalism. 

The Steel Trust did all it could to hold Gary from 
unionizing; but when the strike came the walkout 
was estimated to be 97 per cent. At first everything 
went peacefully, but the Steel Corporation was 
watching for an opportunity to get its strategic Gary 
mills into operation. The occasion presented itself 
on October 4, when strikers coming from a meeting 

[169] 



fell foul of some homeward bound scabs. Local la- 
bor men declare the resultant scrimmage " did not 
make as much disturbance as ordinarily would occur 
in a saloon when two or three men were fighting." 
It was a trivial incident — a matter for the police. 
Only one man was injured, and he very slightly. 
But the inspired press yelled red murder and pic- 
tured the hospitals as full of wounded. The militia 
were ordered in. The unions offered to furnish 700 
ex-service men to enforce law and order; but this 
was rejected. Later the militia were transferred to 
Indiana Harbor; on October 6, a provisional regi- 
ment of regular troops, under command of General 
Leonard Wood, came to Gary from nearby Fort 
Sheridan, and martial law was at once proclaimed. 
The Steel Corporation now had the situation in 
hand; and the Gary strike was doomed. 

Grave charges were voiced against the misuse 
made of the Federal troops in Gary. John Fitz- 
patrick writes me as follows, basing his statements 
upon reliable witnesses: 

Now we have military control^ the city of Gary 
being placed under martial law. /The strike leaders and 
pickets were arrested by the soldiers and put to work 
splitting wood and sweeping the streets. This was most 
humiliating, because the camp was across the street 
from the city hall and in the most frequented part of 
the city. 

When street-sweeping here did not break their spirits, 
these men were taken to the back streets, where they 
had their homes and where their own and the neighbor's 
children watched them through the windows. 

The so-called foreigners have great respect for law 
[170] 



and authority, especially military authority, which 
plays such a big part in their native environments. The 
U. S. Steel Corporation did not fail to take advantage 
of this. In the first place they gave out the impression 
that the letters " U. S." in the corporation's name indi- 
cated that it was owned by the U. S. Government, and 
that the Government soldiers being in town meant that 
any one interfering with the steel company's affairs 
would be deported or sent to Fort Leavenworth. 

Then a mill superintendent would take a squad of 
soldiers and go to the home of a striker. The soldiers 
would be lined up in front of the house; the superin- 
tendent would go in. He would tell John that he 
came to give him his last chance to return to work, 
saying that if he refused he would either go to jail 
or be deported. Then he would take John to the 
window and show him the row of soldiers. John would 
look at the wife and kids and make up his mind that 
his first duty was to them ; that was what the strike was 
for anyway. So he would put on his coat and go back 
to the mills. Then the superintendent would go to the 
next house and repeat the performance. 



Such tactics, coupled with spectacular midnight 
raids to " unearth " the widely advertised "red" 
plotters, — conveniently ignored until the strike, — 
the suppression of meetings, limitations on picket- 
ing, and the hundred forms of studied intimidation 
practiced by the soldiery, in a few weeks broke the 
backbone of the strike. And while the regular 
troops operated so successfully and systematically 
against the workers in Gary, the militia did almost 
as well in Indiana Harbor, where the strike also 
cracked. 

The great re-actionary interests which backed Gtn- 

[171] 



eral Wood for the Republican presidential nomina- 
tion, including the Steel Trust, are giving him 
boundless credit for breaking the steel strike in Gary. 
Consequently there are many workers who believe 
the whole affair was staged to further his political 
fortunes. If not, how did it happen that the militia, 
who could have handled the situation easily, were 
sent out of Gary to make room for his regulars? 
And why was it that before there was a sign of 
trouble General Wood had formed his provisional 
regiment, shipped it from Fort Dodge to Fort 
Sheridan, and made other active preparations to in- 
vade Gary? And then, how did it come that he 
took charge of the situation in person, when at best 
it was only a colonel's job? In fact, how about the 
whole wretched business? Was it merely a politi- 
cal stunt to give General Wood the publicity that 
came to him for it? 

The collapse at Gary and Indiana Harbor affected 
adversely South Chicago and almost the whole 
Chicago district. Worse still, it weakened the mo- 
rale everywhere; and thus undermined, the strike 
rapidly disintegrated. By the middle of Novem- 
ber, district secretary De Young reported that all 
the mills in the district, except those in Joliet and 
Waukegan, were working crews from 50 to 85 per 
cent, of normal, although, due to green hands and 
demoralized working forces, production averaged 
considerably lower. And the situation gradually 
grew worse. Joliet and Waukegan, however, held 
fast to the end, making a fight comparable with that 
of the men in Peoria and Hammond, who had gone 
out several weeks before September 22. It was at 

[172] 



the latter place that police and company guards brut- 
ally shot down and killed four strikers on Septem- 
ber 9. 



In the immediate Youngstown district the strike 
was highly effective, hardly a ton of steel being pro- 
duced anywhere for several w r eeks. This was due 
largely to the walkout of the railroad men employed 
in the mill yards, who acted on their own volition. 
Many of these belonged to the Brotherhoods, and 
others to the Switchmen's Union, while some were 
unorganized; but all struck together. Then they 
held joint mass meetings, got an agreement from 
the A. F. of L. unions that they would be protected 
and represented in any settlement made, and stuck 
loyally to the finish. They were a strong mainstay 
of the strike. 

The weakening of the strike began about Novem- 
ber 15. In a number of plants, notably those of 
the Trumbull Steel Company and the Sharon Steel 
Hoop Company, the Amalgamated Association of 
Iron, Steel and Tin Workers had agreements cover- 
ing the skilled steel making trades, but when the 
laborers struck these skilled men had to quit also. 
The break in the district came when the Amalga- 
mated Association virtually forced the laborers back 
to work in these shops in order to get them in opera- 
tion. This action its officials justified by the follow- 
ing clause in their agreements : 

It was agreed that when a scale or scales are signed 
in general or local conferences, said scales or contracts 
shall be considered inviolate for that scale year, and 
should the employees of any departments (who do not 

[173] 



come under the above named scales or contracts) be- 
come members of the Amalgamated Association during 
the said scale year, the Amalgamated Association may 
present a scale of wages covering said employees, but 
in case men and management cannot come to an agree- 
ment on said scale, same shall be held over until the 
next general or local conference, and all men shall 
continue work until the expiration of the scale year. 

Relying upon their rights under this clause, the 
companies naturally refused to give the laborers any 
consideration whatever until the end of the scale 
year. This meant that the latter were told to work 
and wait until the following June, when their griev- 
ances would be taken up. The result was disas- 
trous ; the laborers generally lost faith in the Amal- 
gamated Association, feeling that they had been 
sacrificed for the skilled workers. They began to 
flock back to work in all the plants. Then men in 
other trades took the position that it was foolish 
for them to fight on, seeing that the Amalgamated 
Association was forcing its men back into the mills. 
A general movement millward set in. By December 
10 the strike was in bad shape. In passing it may 
be noted that in Pittsburgh and other places where 
it had contracts, the Amalgamated Association took 
the same action, with the same general results, al- 
though not so extensive and harmful as in the 
Youngstown district. In Cleveland the charters 
were taken from local unions that refused to abide 
by this clause. 

The other trades affiliated with the National 
Committee protested against the enforcement of the 
clause. They declared it to be invalid, because it 

[174] 



violated trade-union principles and fundamental hu- 
man rights. Seeing that no consideration was given 
the laborers under the agreement, their right to 
strike should have been preserved inviolate. It 
verged upon peonage to tie them up with an agree- 
ment that gave them no protection yet deprived them 
of the right to defend themselves. These trades 
freely predicted that to enforce the clause would 
break the strike in the Youngstown district, as it was 
altogether out of the question to ask men who had 
been on strike two months (especially men inexperi- 
enced in unionism) to resume work upon such 
conditions. But all arguments were vain; the 
Amalgamated Association officials were as adamant. 
They held their agreements with the employers to 
be sacred and to rank above any covenants they had 
entered into with the co-operating trades. They 
would enforce them to the letter — the interests of 
the laborers, the mechanical trades, and even the 
strike itself, to the contrary notwithstanding. Be- 
ing a federated body, the National Committee had 
to bow to this decision and stand by, helpless, while 
its effects worked havoc with the strike. 

Into Youngstown, in common with all the other 
districts, armies of scabs were poured. It was the 
policy of the United States Steel Corporation to 
operate, or at least to pretend to operate its mills, 
regardless of cost. So all the " independents " had 
to do likewise. Word came to the National Com- 
mittee of several companies which, rather than try 
to run with the high-priced, worthless strikebreakers, 
would have been glad either to settle with the unions 
or to close their plants. But they were afraid to do 

[175] 



either; Gary had said " Operate," and it was a case 
of do that or risk going out of business. 

The demand for scabs was tremendous. Prob- 
ably half the strike-breaking agencies in the country 
were engaged in recruiting them. Thousands of 
negroes were brought from the South, and thousands 
of guttersnipe whites from the big northern cities. 
But worst of all were the skilled steel workers from 
outlying sections. There were many of such men 
who went on strike in their own home towns, sneaked 
away to other steel centres and worked there until 
the strike was over. Then they would return to 
their old jobs with cock-and-bull stories (for the 
workers only) of having worked in other industries, 
thus seeking to escape the dreaded odium of being 
known as scabs. These contemptible cowards, being 
competent workers, wrought incalculable injury to 
the strike everywhere, especially in the Youngstown 
district. 

The Youngstown authorities, to begin with, were 
reasonably fair towards the strikers ; but as the strike 
wore on and the steel companies and business men 
became desperate at the determined resistance of the 
workers, they began to apply " Pennsylvania tactics." 
In Youngstown and East Youngstown, Mayors 
Craver and McVey prohibited meetings, " the ob- 
ject of which is discussion of matters pertaining to 
prolonging the strike." * On November 22, dis- 
trict secretary McCadden, and organizers John 
Klinsky and Frank Kurowsky were arrested in East 
Youngstown, charged with criminal syndicalism and 
held for $3,000 bonds each. Later a whole local 

1 Youngstown Vindicator, November 24, 1919. 

[176] 



union, No. 104 Amalgamated Association, was ar- 
rested in the same town for holding a business meet- 
ing. " Citizens' committees " were formed, and 
open threats made to tar and feather all the or- 
ganizers and drive them out of town. Biit the steel 
companies were unable to inflame public opinion suf- 
ficiently for them to venture this outrage. 

Afterward the organizers were discharged; and 
in releasing the men arrested for holding a business 
meeting, Judge David G. Jenkins said : 

I regard the ordinance (E. Youngstown anti-free 
assembly) as a form of hysteria which has been sweep- 
ing the country, whereby well-meaning people, in the 
guise of patriots, have sought to preserve America even 
though going to the extent of denying the fundamental 
principles upon which Americanism is based, and free 
assemblage is one of those fundamentals. 

In the principal outlying towns of the Youngstown 
district, namely Butler, Farrell, Sharon, Newcastle 
and Canton, the strikers were given the worst of it. 
The first four being Pennsylvania towns, no specific 
description of them is necessary. Suffice it to say 
that typical Cossack conditions prevailed. In Can- 
ton it was not much better. The companies turned 
loose many vicious gunmen on the strikers. The 
mayor was removed from office and his place given 
to a company man; and a sweeping injunction was is- 
sued against the strikers, denying them many funda- 
mental rights. 1 The district, nevertheless, held re- 
markably well. 

Cleveland from the first to the last was one of the 

1 No history of the movement in the Youngstown district could be 
complete without some mention of the assistance rendered the work- 
ers by Bishop John Podea of the Roumanian Greek Catholic church, 

[177] 



strong points in the battle line. On September 22 
the men struck almost 100 per cent, in all the big 
plants, and until the very end preserved a wonderful 
solidarity. Under the excellent control of the or- 
ganizers working with Secretary Raisse there was 
at no time a serious break in the ranks, and when the 
strike was called off on January 8, at least 50 per 
cent, of the men were still out, with production not 
over 30 per cent, of normal. Thousands of the men 
refused to go back to the mills at all, leaving them 
badly crippled. 

The backbone of the Cleveland strike was the 
enormous mills of the American Steel and Wire Co. 
This calls attention to the fact that, as a whole, the 
employees of this subsidiary of the U. S. Steel Cor- 
poration made incomparably a better fight than did 
the workers in any other considerable branch of the 
steel industry. Long after the strike had been 
cracked in all other sections of the industry, the rod 
and wire mill men of Cleveland, Donora, Braddock, 
Rankin, Joliet and Waukegan stood practically solid. 
Even as late as December 27, only twelve days be- 
fore the end, the companies were forced to the ex- 
pedient of assembling a rump meeting in Cleveland 
of delegates from many centres, for the purpose of 

Youngstown, and Rev. E. A. Kirby, pastor of St. Rose Roman Cath- 
olic church of Girard, Ohio. Usually the churchmen (of all faiths) 
in the various steel towns were careful not to jeopardize the fat 
company contributions by helping the unions. But not these men. 
They realized that all true followers of the Carpenter of Nazareth 
had to be on the side of the oppressed steel workers ; and throughout 
the entire campaign they distinguished themselves by unstinted co- 
operation with the unions. The service was never too great nor the 
call too often for them to respond willingly. 

[178] 



calling off the strike. But the men voted unani- 
mously for continuation under the leadership of the 
National Committee. When the strike was finally 
ended, however, they accepted the decision with good 
grace, because they were penetrated with the general 
strike idea and realized the folly of trying alone to 
whip the united steel companies. 

The remarkable fight of the rod and wire mill 
men was due in large measure to the peculiar circum- 
stances surrounding their organization. These are 
highly important and require explanation: The 
regular system used by the National Committee re- 
sulted usually in organization from the bottom up- 
ward; that is, in response to the general appeals 
made to the men in the great mass meetings, ordi- 
narily the first to join the unions were the unskilled, 
who are the workers with the least to lose, the most 
to gain, and consequently those most likely to take a 
chance. Gradually, as the confidence of the men 
developed, the movement would extend on up 
through the plants until it included the highest 
skilled men. Given time and a reasonable opportun- 
ity, it was an infallible system. It was far superior 
to the old trade-union plan of working solely from 
the top down, because the latter always stopped be- 
fore it got to the main body of the men, the unskilled 
workers. 

The " bottom upward " system was used with the 
rod and wire mills, the same as with all others. 
But while it was operating the skilled men who had 
been attracted to the movement in Joliet, Donora 
and Cleveland started a " top downward " move- 
ment of their own. They sent committees to all the 

[179] 



large rod and wire mills in the country, appealing to 
the skilled men to organize. These committeemen, 
actual workers and acquainted with all the old timers 
in the business, could do more real organizing in a 
day with their tradesmen than regular organizers 
could in a month. Hardly would they go into a 
locality, no matter how difficult, than they would at 
once inspire that confidence in the movement which 
is so indispensible, and which takes organizers so 
long to develop. The result was a " top down- 
ward " movement working simultaneously with the 
" bottom upward " drive, which produced a high de- 
gree of organization for the rod and wire mill men. 
A great weakness of the strike was the failure of 
many skilled workers to participate therein. This 
tended directly to aid the employers, and also to 
discourage the unskilled workers, who looked for 
their more expert brothers to take the lead in the 
strike as well as in the regular shop experiences. 
The explanation has been offered that this aloof- 
ness was because the skilled men are " unorganiz- 
able." But this is a dream. In the mills controlled 
by it, the Amalgamated Association (which is really 
a skilled workers' union) has thousands of them in 
its ranks, most of whom earn higher wages than em- 
ployees of similar classes in the Trust mills. If the 
proper means to organize them could have been ap- 
plied, the skilled workers would have been the 
leaders in the late strike, instead of generally the 
scabs. The same thing done in the rod and wire 
mills should have been done in all the important sec- 
tions of the industry, blast furnaces, open hearths, 
sheet, tin, rail, plate, tube mills, etc. Committees 

[180] 



of well-known skilled workers in these departments 
should have been sent forth everywhere to start 
movements from the top to meet the great surge 
coming up from the bottom. Had this been done, 
then Gary with all his millions could not have broken 
the strike. The tie-up would have been so complete 
and enduring that a settlement would have been com- 
pulsory. 

But it was impossible ; the chronic lack of resources 
prevented it. With the pitifully inadequate funds 
and men at its disposal, all the National Committee 
could do was to go ahead with its general campaign, 
leaving the detail and special work undone. It is 
certainly to be hoped that in the next big drive this 
committee system will be extensively followed. It 
is the solution of the skilled worker problem, and 
when applied intelligently in connection with the 
fundamental u bottom upward " movement, it must 
result in the organization of the industry. 



In the Bethlehem Steel Company's plants the 
strike was not very effective. This was due prin- 
cipally to the failure of previous strikes and to gen- 
eral lack of organization. In Reading and in 
Lebanon there had been strikes on for many weeks 
before the big walkout. The workers' ranks there 
were already broken. In Sparrows' Point likewise 
several departments had been on strike since May 
3. Not more than 500 men, principally laborers 
and tin mill workers, responded to the general strike 
call; but they made a hard fight of it. In Steelton 
the men had been very strongly organized during the 
war; but the error was made of putting all the trades 

[181] 



into one federal union. Then when the craft unions 
insisted later that their men be turned over to them, 
the resultant resistance of the members, and espe- 
cially of the paid officers, virtually destroyed the or- 
ganization. When the strike came only a small 
percentage struck, nor did they stick long. 

Speaking of the strike in the main plant at Beth- 
lehem, Secretary Hendricks says: 

The strike was called September 29, and about 75 
per cent, of the men responded. These were largely 
American workers. The Machinists, which comprise 
about 40 per cent, of the total workers, were the craft 
most involved. In the mill and blast furnace depart- 
ments, the response was among the rollers, heaters, 
and highly skilled men generally, which led to the com- 
plete shut-down of these departments. The molders 
practically shut the foundries down. Electrical work- 
ers, steamfitters, millwrights, and general repairmen 
responded well. The patternmakers did not go out. 

The first break came a week later. It was 
charged largely to the steam engineers, who heeded 
the strike-breaking advice of their international of- 
ficials and returned to work. Another factor was 
the failure of support from the railroad men on the 
inter-plant system. Had these two bodies of men 
been held in line by their officers, the Bethlehem 
strike would have been a success. 

In the Bethlehem situation too much reliance was 
placed in the skilled trades; more attention should 
have been given to the organization of the real fight- 
ing force, the unskilled workers. Another mistake 
was to have allowed the strikes to take place in 
Reading, Lebanon and Sparrows' Point. Even a 

[182] 



tyro could see that they had no hope of success. 
Those men could easily have been held in line until 
the big strike, to the enormous strengthening of the 
latter. The National Committee had little to do 
with the Bethlehem situation before the strike, the 
movement developing to a great extent indepen- 
dently. 

Nowhere in the strike zone was there a more bit- 
ter fight than in the Buffalo district, which was di- 
rected by organizers Thompson and Streifler. All 
the important plants were affected, but the storm cen- 
tered around the Lackawanna Steel Company. This 
concern left nothing undone to defeat its workers. 
For eight months it had prevented any meetings 
from being held in Lackawanna, and then, when 
the workers broke through this obstruction and 
crowded into the unions, it discharged hundreds of 
them. This put the iron into the workers' hearts, 
and they made an heroic struggle. So firm were 
their ranks that when the general strike was called 
off on January 8, they voted to continue the fight in 
Lackawanna. But this was soon seen to be hope- 
less. 

Much company violence was used in the Lacka- 
wanna strike. The New York State Constabulary 
and the company guards, of a cut with their odious 
Pennsylvania brethren, slugged, shot and jailed men 
and women in real Steel Trust style. Many strikers 
were injured, and two killed outright. One of these, 
Joseph Mazurek, a native-born American, was 
freshly back from the fighting in France. Lacka- 
wanna was just a little bit of an industrial hell. 1 

1 In connection with this matter it is interesting to note that 

[183] 



As a strike measure the Lackawanna Steel Com- 
pany evicted many strikers from the company houses. 
In Braddock, Rankin, Homestead, Butler, Wierton, 
Natrona, Bethlehem and many other places, the 
companies put similar pressure upon their men, 
either evicting them or foreclosing the mortgages 
on their half-paid-for houses. Threats of such ac- 
tion drove thousands back to work, it being pecu- 
liarly terrifying to workers to find themselves de- 
prived of their homes in winter time. Where evic- 
tions actually occurred the victims usually had to 
leave town or find crowded quarters with other 
strikers. The much-lauded housing schemes of the 
steel companies are merely one of a whole arsenal of 
weapons to crush the independence of their workers. 
No employer should be permitted to own or control 
the houses in which his men live. 



The Wheeling district is noted as strong union 
country. The " independent " mills therein had 
provided the main strength of the Amalgamated 
Association for several years prior to this move- 
ment; but the Trust mills were still unorganized. 
Under the guidance of National Committee local 
secretary J. M. Peters, however, these men, in 
the mills of Wheeling, Bellaire, Benwood and 
Martin's Ferry, were brought into the unions. On 
September 22 they struck 100 per cent., completely 
closing all the plants. They held practically solid 

after the strike had ended the union men entered suits against the 
steel companies for heavy damages. Up to the present writing 
the Lackawanna Steel Company, realizing the indefensibility of 
the outrages, has made out-of-court settlements to the extent of 
$22,500. 

[184] 



until the first week in December, when they broke 
heavily. 

The immediate cause of this break merits explana- 
tion. The National Committee, at the outset 
of the strike, organized a publicity department, 
headed by Mr. Edwin Newdick, formerly of the Na- 
tional War Labor Board. In addition to getting 
out strike stories for the press, many of which were 
written by the well-known novelist, Mary Heaton 
Vorse, this department assembled and issued in 
printed bulletin form statistical information relative 
to the progress and effectiveness of the strike. The 
steel companies, through spies in the unions, news- 
papers, etc., disputed this information, telling the 
strikers that they were being victimized as the mills 
in all districts except their own were in full operation, 
and advising them to send out committees to investi- 
gate the situation. 

It was a seductive argument and many were de- 
ceived by it. Consequently, quite generally, such 
committees (usually financed and chaperoned by the 
local Chambers of Commerce) went forth from 
various localities. Of course, they returned the sort 
of reports the companies wished. Much harm was 
done thereby. The Steubenville district suffered 
from the lying statement of such a committee, the 
strikers having made a winning fight up till the time 
it was made public, the middle of November. But 
nowhere was the effect so serious as in the Wheeling 
district. 

The Wheeling committee was headed by one 
Robert Edwards, widely known for years as an ex- 
treme radical. It visited many points in the steel 

[185] 



industry, taking its figures on steel production and 
strike conditions from employers' sources, and com- 
pletely ignoring national and local strike officials 
everywhere. The ensuing report pictured the steel 
industry as virtually normal. Although he had been 
recently expelled from the Amalgamated Association 
Edwards still had great influence with the men, and 
his report broke their ranks. In future general 
strikes drastic disciplinary measures should be taken 
to forestall the activities of such committees. 



Of the 6500 men employed by the Colorado Fuel 
and Iron Co. in its Pueblo mills, 95 per cent, walked 
out on September 22. When the strike was called 
off three and one-half months later not over 1500 of 
these had returned to their jobs. Production was 
below 20 per cent, of normal. Locally the tie-up 
was so effective that on January 9, at the biggest 
labor meeting in Pueblo's history, National Com- 
mittee local secretary W. H. Young and the other 
organizers had to beg the men for hours to go back 
to work. These officials knew that the great 
struggle had been decided in the enormous steel 
centers of the East (Pueblo being credited with pro- 
ducing only two per cent, of the nation's steel) and 
that it would be madness for them to try to win the 
fight alone. 

The heart of the Pueblo strike was opposition to 
the Rockefeller Industrial Plan, in force in the mills. 
This worthless, tyrannical arrangement the men 
could not tolerate and were determined to contest to 
the end. Realizing the minor importance of the 
Pueblo mills in the national strike, the men offered 

[186] 



at the outset to waive all their demands pending its 
settlement, provided the company would agree to 
meet with their representatives later to take up these 
matters. But this was flatly refused; it was either 
accept the Rockefeller Plan or fight, even though 98 
per cent, of the men had voted to abolish it. 

Shortly after this incident John D. Rockefeller, 
Jr., gained much favorable comment and pleas- 
ing publicity by his glowing speech about in- 
dustrial democracy and the right of collective bar- 
gaining, delivered at the National Industrial Con- 
ference at Washington, D. C. He was hailed as 
one of the country's progressive employers. But 
when the striking Pueblo workers wired him, request- 
ing that he grant them these rights, he referred them 
to Mr. Welborn, President of the C. F. and I. Com- 
pany, well knowing that this gentleman would deny 
their plea. 

The strike was markedly peaceful throughout, no 
one being hurt and hardly any one arrested. But on 
December 28, the state militia were suddenly 
brought in, ostensibly because of an attack supposed 
to have been made two days previously upon Mr. F. 
E. Parks, manager of the Minnequa works. The 
public never learned the details of this mysterious af- 
fair which served so well to bring in the troops. 
Nor was the " culprit " ever located, although large 
rewards were offered for his capture. 



The Johnstown strike was so complete that for 
eight weeks the great Cambria Steel Co., despite 
strenuous efforts, could not put a single department 

[187] 



of its enormous mills into operation. Every trick 
was used to break the strike. The Back-To-Work 
organization 1 labored ceaselessly, holding meetings 
and writing and telephoning the workers to coax or 
intimidate them back to their jobs. Droves of scabs 
were brought in from outside points. But to no 
effect; the workers held fast. Then the company 
embarked upon the usual Pennsylvania policy of ter- 
rorism. 

I, personally, was the first to feel its weight. I 
was billed to speak in Johnstown on November 7. 
Upon alighting from the train I was met by two 
newspaper men who advised me to quit the town at 
once, stating that the business men and company of- 
ficials had held a meeting the night before and or- 
ganized a " Citizens' Committee," which was to 
break the strike by applying " Duquesne tactics." 
Beginning with myself, all the organizers were to 
be driven from the city. Disregarding this warn- 
ing, I started for the Labor Temple ; but was again 
warned by the newspapermen, and finally stopped on 
the street by city detectives, who told me that it 
would be at the risk of my life to take a step nearer 
the meeting place. I demanded protection, but it 
was not forthcoming. I was told to leave. 

In the meantime, Secretary Conboy arriving upon 
the scene, the two of us started to the Mayor's of- 
fice to protest, when suddenly, in broad daylight, at 
a main street corner in the heart of the city, a mob 

1 These Back-To-Work organizations were formed in many steel 
towns; their purpose was to recruit scabs. They were composed of 
company officials, business men and " loyal " workers. The com- 
panies furnished the wherewithal to finance them. 

[188] 



MOXDAT, OCTOBER «, J9U 



THE PITTSBURG B CHROKTCLE TELEGRAPH 



The Strike Has Failed 



SornAte AL LAVORO 
wr; 



-«« 




Go Back To Work 



STEEL TRUST NEWSPAPER PROPAGANDA 

Pittsburgh Chronicle Telegraphy October 6, 1919. 



of about forty men rushed us. Shouldering me away 
from Mr. Conboy, they stuck guns against my ribs 
and took me to the depot. While there they made 
a cowardly attempt to force me to sign a Back-To- 
Work card, which meant to write myself down a 
scab. Later I was put aboard an eastbound train. 
Several of the mob accompanied me to Conemaugh, 
a few miles out. The same night this " Citizens' 
Committee/' with several hundred more, surrounded 
the organizers in their hotel and gave them twenty- 
four hours time to leave town. The city authorities 
refused to stir to defend them, and the following 
day organizers T. J. Conboy, Frank Hall, Frank 
Butterworth, and Frank Kurowsky were compelled to 
go. Domenick Gelotte, a local organizer of the 
miners, refused to depart and was promptly arrested. 
Up to this time the strike had been perfectly peace- 
ful. The shut-down was so thorough that not even a 
picket line was necessary. 

The mob perpetrating these outrages (duly 
praised by the newspapers as examples of ioo per 
cent. Americanism) was led by W. R. Lunk, secre- 
tary of the Y. M. C. A., and H. L. Tredennick, 
president of the chamber of commerce. This pair 
freely stated that the strike could never be broken 
by peaceful means, and that they were prepared to 
apply the necessary violence, which they did. Of 
course, they were never arrested. Had they been 
workers and engaged in a similar escapade against 
business men, they would have been lucky to get off 
with twenty years imprisonment apiece. 

After a couple of weeks the organizers returned 
to Johnstown. Their efforts at holding the men 

[i8 9 ] 



together were so fruitful that the Cambria Company, 
in its own offices, organized a new mob to drive them 
out again. But this time, better prepared, they 
stood firm. On November 29, when the fresh depor- 
tation was to take place, Secretary Conboy demanded 
that Mayor Francke give him and the others protec- 
tion. He offered to furnish the city a force of 1000 
union ex-service men to preserve law and order. 
This offer was refused, and the Mayor and Sheriff 
reluctantly agreed to see that peace was kept. They 
informed the business men's mob that there was 
nothing doing. It was a tense situation. Had the 
threatened deportation been attempted, most seri- 
ous trouble would surely have resulted. 

In the meantime numbers of the State Constabu- 
lary had been sent into town (the city and county 
authorities denying responsibility for their presence) 
and they terrorized the workers in their customary, 
brutal way. Eventually the result sought by all this 
outlawry developed; a break occurred in the ranks 
of the highly-paid, skilled steel workers. Although 
small at first, the defection gradually spread as the 
weeks rolled on, until, by January 8, about two- 
thirds of the men had returned to work. 



Considered nationally, strike sentiment continued 
strong until about the middle of the third month, 
when a feeling of pessimism regarding the outcome 
began to manifest itself among the various interna- 
tional organizations. Consequently, a meeting of 
the National Committee was held in Washington on 
December 13 and 14, to take stock of the situation. 
At this meeting I submitted the following figures : 

[190] 



M en on Strike Men on Strike [ 

District Sept. 2Q Dec. 10 

Pittsburgh 25,000 8,000 

Homestead 9,000 5>5°° 

Braddock-Rankin .. * 15,000 8,000 

Clairton 4,000 1,500 

Duquesne-McKeesport 12,000 1,000 

Vandergrift 4>ooo 1,800 

Natrona-Brackenridge 5,000 i,5°° 

New Kensington 1,100 200 

Apollo i,5°° 2 °° 

Leechburg 3>o°° 300 

Donora-Monessen 12,000 xo,ooo 

Johnstown 18,000 7,000 

Coatesville 4,000 500 

Youngstown district 70,000 12,800 

Wheeling district 15,000 3,000 

Cleveland 25,000 15,000 

Steubenville district 12,000 2,000 

Chicago district 90,000 18,000 

Buffalo 12,000 5,000 

Pueblo 6,000 5,000 

Birmingham 2,000 500 

. Bethlehem Plants (5) 20,000 2,500 

365,600 109,300 

Estimated production of steel, 50 to 60 per cent, of normal 
capacity. 

Owing to the chaotic conditions in many steel dis- 
tricts, it was exceedingly difficult at all times to get 
accurate statistics upon the actual state of affairs. 
Those above represented the very best that the Na- 
tional Committee's whole organizing force could as- 
semble. The officials of the Amalgamated Associa- 
tion strongly favored calling off the strike, but 
agreed that the figures cited on the number of men 
still out were conservative and within the mark. 
The opinion prevailed that the strike was still effec- 
tive and that it should be vigorously continued. 

[191] 



On January 3 and 4, the National Committee met 
in Pittsburgh. At this gathering it soon became 
evident that the strike was deemed hopeless, so, 
according to its custom when important decisions had 
to be made, the National Committee called a spe- 
cial meeting for January 8, all the international or- 
ganizations being notified. The situation was bad. 
Reliable reports on January 8 showed the steel com- 
panies generally to have working forces of from 70 
to 80 per cent., and steel production of from 60 to 
70 per cent, of normal. Possibly 100,000 men still 
held out; but it seemed merely punishing these game 
fighters to continue the strike. They were being in- 
jured by it far more than was the Steel Trust. 
There was no hope of a settlement, the steel com- 
panies being plainly determined now to fight on in- 
definitely. Therefore, in justice to the loyal strikers 
and to enable them to go back to the mills with 
clear records, the meeting adopted, by a vote of ten 
unions to five, a sub-committee's report providing 
that the strike be called off; that the commissaries 
be closed as fast as conditions in the various locali- 
ties would permit, and that the campaign of educa- 
tion and organization of the steel workers be con- 
tinued with undiminished vigor. 

At this point, wishing to have the new phase of 
the work go ahead with a clean slate, I resigned my 
office as Secretary-Treasurer of the National Com- 
mittee. Mr. J. G. Brown was elected to fill the 
vacancy. The following telegram was sent to all 
the strike centers, and given to the press : 

The Steel Corporations, with the active assistance of 
[192] 



the press, the courts, the federal troops, state police, and 
many public officials, have denied steel workers their 
rights of free speech, free assembly and the right to 
organize, and by this arbitrary and ruthless misuse of 
power have brought about a condition which has com- 
pelled the National Committee for Organizing Iron 
and Steel Workers to vote today that the active strike 
phase of the steel campaign is now at an end. A vigor- 
ous campaign of education and re-organization will be 
immediately begun and will' not cease until industrial 
justice has been achieved in the steel industry. All 
steel strikers are now at liberty to return to work pend- 
ing preparations for the next big organization move- 
ment. 

John Fitzpatrick, 
D. J. Davis, 
Edw. J. Evans, 
Wm. Hannon, 
Wm. Z. Foster. 

The great steel strike was ended. 



[ J 93] 



XI 
NATIONAL AND RACIAL ELEMENTS 

A MODERN BABEL — AMERICANS AS SKILLED 
WORKERS — FOREIGNERS AS UNSKILLED 

WORKERS LANGUAGE DIFFICULTIES — THE 

NEGRO IN THE STRIKE THE RACE PROBLEM 

In order to prove its charge that the purpose of the 
steel strike was contrary to the spirit of our institu- 
tions, the Steel Trust's great propaganda organiza- 
tion never ceased asserting, (i) that the strike was 
a movement of foreigners, (2) that the Americans 
in the mills were opposed to it for patriotic reasons 
and were taking no part therein. The vicious press 
made much capital of these allegations, using them 
heavily against the strike. Now let us see how 
much truth there was in them : 

1. Unquestionably the foreign-born were in the 
majority among the strikers; but how could it be 
otherwise in view of the fact that they make up the 
bulk of the working force in the industry? The fol- 
lowing table, submitted to the Senate Committee by 
Mr. A. F. Diehl, General Manager of the Du- 
quesne Works of the Carnegie Steel Co., illustrates 
this fact : * 

1 Senate Committee Steel Strike Hearings, page 532. 

[194] 



RECAPITULATION OF NATIONALITIES, AS OF AUG. 
1ST, 19 19, FOR TOTAL PLANT, DUQUESNE WORKS 

Nationality Total Per cent. 

American 2,097 34-6 

American (colored) 344 5.7 

English 147 3.4 

Scotch 41 .7 

Welsh . 28 .5 

Irish 58 .9 

Canadian 4 .1 

German . , 104 1.8 

French 6 .1 

Swedish c 79 1.3 

Italian a ,' 128 2.1 

Greek 23 .4 

Swiss 5 .1 

Norwegian 4 .1 

Danish 1 „ .0 

Hollander 1 .0 

Russian 185 3.0 

Lithuanian 201 3.3 

Lattis 3 .0 

Bohemian 3 .0 

Croatian 222 3.7 

Magyar 742 12.2 

Slovak 930 15.3 

Roumanian 7 .1 

Ruthenian 82 1.3 

Bulgarian 25 .4 

Servian 219 3.6 

Polish 246 4.0 

Armenian 34 .5 

Dalmatian 6 .1 

Macedonian 10 .2 

Hebrew 10 .2 

Turkish 80 1.3 

Totals 6,075 100.00 

This condition is typical of steel mills generally in 
the greater Pittsburgh and Middle West districts, 

[195] 



where the body of the industry is located. In Clair- 
ton, of 4,600 employees, divided into 39 national- 
ities, 35 per cent, are Americans. On page 480 of 
the report of the Senate Committee Steel Strike 
Hearings, appears a table covering the employees of 
the Homestead Steel Works, Howard Axle Works, 
and Carrie Furnaces (an industrial unit), submitted 
by General Manager J. S. Oursler. It shows a total 
of 14,687 employees, of 54 nationality divisions. 
Of these employees, 5,799, or 39.45 per cent, are 
stated to be American whites. But as Mr. Oursler 
re-iterated in his testimony that he had classed as 
Americans all those who had their citizenship 
papers, both these figures should therefore be con- 
siderably reduced. Besides, it must be borne in 
mind that these several tables include the office 
forces, bosses, etc., which are almost entirely Ameri- 
can, and which were not involved in the strike. In 
the steel districts in question it is exceedingly doubt- 
ful if over 25 per cent, of the actual workers are 
American-born whites. How, then, can a general 
strike of steel workers be anything else than largely 
a strike of foreigners? 

2. Regarding the alleged non-participation of 
Americans in the movement : Although in many dis- 
tricts where the strike was practically 100 per cent, 
effective, the Americans struck almost to a man with 
the other workers and fought gamely to the finish, 
nevertheless it must be admitted that in the main, 
when compared with the foreigners, 1 they made a 

1 In steel industry usage (followed in this book unless otherwise 
noted) the term "foreigners" applies chiefly to the nationalities of 
the later immigrations, including the Slavic races, Roumanians, 

[196] 



poor showing. To begin with they organized slowly ; 
then they struck reluctantly and scatteringly; and 
finally, they showed little tenacity as strikers. But 
this general sluggishness originated, however, not in 
patriotic objections to the movement or lack of sym- 
pathy with its aims; but chiefly because the Ameri- 
cans, as skilled workers, were naturally slower and 
less determined in action than the foreigners, or un- 
skilled workers. 

In the steel industry the most skilled men are to 
be found in those trades actually engaged in the mak- 
ing and rolling of iron and steel — the melters, pud- 
dlers, shearmen, rollers, roughers, heaters, Bes- 
semer blowers, etc. These men are paid upon a ton- 
nage basis and generally receive considerably higher 
wages than the mechanical tradesmen — bricklayers, 
machinists, boilermakers, riggers, firemen, engineers, 
electrical workers, blacksmiths, etc., who build, main- 
tain and generally operate the plants. It is among 
the favored tonnage trades that the Americans are 
especially intrenched. 

In the old days these highly skilled workers took 
the initiative in the struggle for human rights in the 
steel industry — the mechanical trades and unskilled 
workers playing a very minor part. Homestead 
was one of their great battles, only 752 of the 3800 
men employed being union members in good-stand- 
ing. They were then bold, militant and tenacious as 

Bulgarians, Hungarians, Greeks, Italians and others from Eastern 
and Southern Europe. These are the so-called " hunkies." The 
peoples of the earlier immigrations — the English, Irish, Scotch, 
Welsh, Germans and Scandinavians — who speak our language, 
hold good jobs, and are generally well established, are not exactly 
considered Americans, but they are rarely called foreigners. 

[197] 



bull dogs. But since those times they have been de- 
feated so often, due to a weakening of their propor- 
tional strength and strategical position, that they 
have lost much of the independent spirit which once 
characterized them. They now fear the power of 
the Steel Trust; they dread its pitiless blacklist; they 
hesitate to put in jeopardy their comparatively good 
jobs, which they secured only after long years of 
service in minor positions, and which, once lost, are 
so hard to regain. They want better conditions 
now as much as they ever did, but they lack the self- 
confidence to fight for them. All through the cam- 
paign their attitude, barring the exceptions here and 
there, was to wait until the lesser skilled men had so 
far perfected the organization as to make it seem 
safe for them to join it. When the strike came the 
unskilled workers led the way; then came the mechan- 
ical trades ; with the aristocratic steel workers bring- 
ing up the rear. But in scurrying back to scab in 
the mills, the order was just the reverse. This was 
the experience in virtually every section of the in- 
dustry. 

It would be wrong, however, to say that the failure 
of American workers to participate more heartily in 
the movement was due solely to their favored posi- 
tion in the industry. To some extent race prejudice 
also came into play, especially in those districts where 
the organization had not yet reached far enough up 
into the plants to include the skilled workers. 
Everywhere American-born workingmen, unfortu- 
nately, are prone to look with some suspicion, if not 
contempt and hatred, upon foreigners, whom they 
have been taught to believe are injuring their stan- 

[i 9 8] 



dard of living. The companies made the most of 
this. Dubbing the walkout a " hunky " strike, they 
told the Americans that if it succeeded the latter 
would have to give over to the despised foreigners 
all the good jobs and shop privileges they enjoyed. 
Their slogan was " Don't let the 4 hunkies ' rule the 
mills." They openly circulated handbills inciting 
to race war. The following, from Elwood, Pa., 
where a National Tube Company plant is located, 
is typical : 

WAKE UP AMERICANS! ! 

Italian Laborers, organized under the American 
Federation of Labor are going to strike Monday and 
are threatening workmen who want to continue work- 
ing. 

These foreigners have been told by labor agitators 
that if they would join the union they would get 
Americans' jobs. 

They are being encouraged by ITALIAN MER- 
CHANTS, who are in sympathy with them. 
ARE YOU GOING TO SLEEP AND LET MOB 
RULE THREATEN THE PEACE OF OUR 
TOWN? 

In towns where often the foreign population is 
three-fourths of the whole, such propaganda was 
most inflammatory. The newspapers did all they 
could to make it more so. They solemnly warned 
of the danger of a foreign uprising and advised a 
campaign of militant, ioo per cent. Americanism; 
which meant, on the one hand for the local author- 
ities, gunmen, and business men to set up a reign of 
terror, and on the other, for the workers all to go 
back to work at once. The courts and so-called 

[199] 



peace officers did their part. They jailed, clubbed 
and shot the foreigners and left the Americans, even 
if they were strikers, in comparative immunity. 
Nothing was left undone to create a race issue, and 
it is not surprising that many American workers, un- 
organized and ignorant, were mislead by this and 
inveigled back to the mills. 

It has been charged that the unions neglected the 
American steel workers and concentrated upon the 
organization of the foreigners. If anything, the re- 
verse is true; for by far the weight of the appeal 
made was to the English speaking elements. Every 
piece of literature put out stressed heavily the 
English language. Of twenty-five National Com- 
mittee district and local secretaries, only three were 
born in Europe; of a dozen Amalgamated Associa- 
tion organizers, not one spoke anything but English, 
and of the crew as a whole, over 80 per cent, were 
American born. By its very nature such an organiz- 
ing force had to make strong appeal to the American 
workers. In fact, the foreigners constantly insisted 
upon this, because, strangers in a strange land, they 
always crave and seek American co-operation in their 
union movements. That this co-operation was not 
more in evidence in the steel campaign was the 
cause of much bitter complaint among them. 



But if the Americans and skilled workers gener- 
ally proved indifferent union men in the steel cam- 
paign, the foreign, unskilled workers covered them- 
selves with glory. Throughout the whole affair 
they showed an understanding discipline, courage 
and tenacity of purpose that compared favorably 

[200] 



with that shown in any organized effort ever put 
forth by workingmen on this continent. Beyond 
question they displayed trade-union qualities of the 
very highest type. Their solidarity was unbreak- 
able; their fighting spirit invincible. They nobly 
struggled onward in the face of difficulties that would 
try the stoutest hearts. They proved themselves 
altogether worthy of the best American labor tra- 
ditions. Thousands of them were intending to re- 
turn to Europe shortly and apparently had slight 
reason to establish good conditions here; but they 
fought on, many spending their little savings during 
the strike, and thus postponing indefinitely the long- 
looked-for trip to the homelands. 

This attitude of the foreign workers is a bitter 
pill for the Steel Trust. For many years it had 
scoured the countries of Eastern and Southern 
Europe, and packed its mills with poor, dispirited, 
ignorant immigrants of three score nationalities, in 
the hope that it was finally supplanting its original 
crew of independent American and Western Europ- 
ean workmen by a race of submissive, unorganizable 
slaves. And for a long time this shameful policy 
worked well. Wages sank to nowhere; conditions 
became unspeakably wretched; every strike of the 
old-time, organized workers was smothered by an 
avalanche of job-hungry immigrants. 1 But now 

1 The brazen frankness with which this policy was carried out is 
illustrated by the following advertisement, which appeared in the 
Pittsburgh Gazette-Times, July 15, 1909, during the big steel strike 
of that time: 

Men Wanted — Tinners, catchers and helpers to work in open 
shops. Syrians, Poles and Roumanians preferred. Steady 
employment and good wages to men willing to work. Fare 
paid and no fees charged. 

[201] 



these foreigners are waking up; in consequence of 
hard economic conditions, a better acquaintance with 
our language and institutions, an inherent class soli- 
darity, the example of union men in other industries, 
and the social upheavals in Europe, these men are 
opening their eyes; and they are fast taking their 
place in the very front rank of the working class 
fighters for industrial liberty. And now the Steel 
Trust, discovering that its hoped-for-scabs are in 
truth highly rebellious workingmen, is making the 
welkin ring with inconsistent denunciation of the 
" revolutionary foreigners," with whom just a short 
while ago it was so anxious to crowd its plants. The 
biter has been very badly bitten. 

For the unions the nationality problem was serious 
throughout the k entire campaign — the employers 
had worked for years to make it an insoluble one. 
Something of the situation may be gleaned when it 
is recalled that the steel industry comprises hundreds 
of mills, scattered through a dozen states, and em- 
ploying half a million workers. These speak dozens 
of widely differing languages, worship through many 
mutually antagonistic religions, and are moved by 
numberless racial and national animosities. Yet the 
National Committee, with the skimped resources it 
had in hand, had to and did weld together this vast 
polyglot, heterogeneous mass into a voluntary or- 
ganization, kept it thinking alike, and held it in 
strong discipline for months in the face of the bitter 
opposition of the Steel Trust, which sought in every 
conceivable way to divide the workers by playing 
upon their multiplicity of fears and prejudices. 

In accomplishing this huge task the first requisite 

[202] 



was to overcome the language difficulty sufficiently 
to permit the message of trade unionism to be 
brought forcefully to the many diverse elements. 
Because doing so would have rendered the meetings 
ruinously cumbersome and unwieldy, it was out of 
the question to utilize all the languages or any con- 
siderable number of them; so the plan was followed 
of using only the predominant ones; the theory be- 
ing that if the large bodies of workers speaking them 
could be reached, they in turn would find means to 
influence the minorities speaking other languages. 

As the various foreign groups tend strongly to 
colonize in certain districts, the basic languages 
spoken in a given plant, regardless of how many 
nationalities work therein, ordinarily number not 
more than four or five, including always English, 
usually a couple of the Slavic tongues (Slavish, Pol- 
ish, Russian, Croatian, Lithuanian, Serbian, etc.), 
often Hungarian, and occasionally Italian, Rouman- 
ian or Greek. For example, among the fifty-four 
nationalities in the big Homestead plants, the prin- 
cipal languages spoken are, in the order of their 
numerical importance, English, Slavish, Russian, 
Hungarian and Polish. Move these predominate 
language groups and you move the whole working 
force; that was the system in the steel campaign. 
Seldom was a piece of literature issued, even for 
national circulation, with as many as six languages 
upon it; the vitally important strike call had but 
seven, while four was the customary number. 

About twenty-five organizers who spoke these pre- 
dominating languages were put in the field. Great 
care was taken by the A. F. of L., National Com- 

[203] 



mittee and co-operating unions to select reliable, 
level-headed men of influence and standing among 
their respective peoples, men who could be depended 
upon to go along with the general program, and not 
to work upon some destructive side-issue of their 
own. Besides, efforts were made to take every pos- 
sible advantage of the fact that practically all the 
foreign workers have some slight smattering of 
English. Accordingly, the English-speaking organ- 
izers were coached to get rid of all trade-union 
technical expressions and to confine their talks to 
fundamentals; to speak slowly, distinctly, and in the 
simplest, even " pidjinized " terms, to illustrate the 
whole with sign language, and to follow out a sys- 
tem of repetition and restatement that was bound 
to make their meaning plain to the most unknowing. 
Such talks, while not calculated to stir the emotions, 
made clear the situation and were greatly appreci- 
ated by the foreigners, thousands of whom, during 
the steel campaign, for the first time felt the pleas- 
ure and encouragement of understanding the des- 
pairingly difficult English spoken from a platform. 
The steel workers' meetings were schools in prac- 
tical Americanization. 1 

With the language problem solved in even this 
imperfect way, the persistent advocacy of labor union 
principles, backed up by a few thoroughgoing, com- 

1 During the great organization drive in the Chicago packing 
houses in 1917-18, this method was used for several months in the 
large local union of car builders and repairmen, fully 90 per cent, 
of whom, born in Eastern Europe, were supposedly non-English- 
speaking. As a result they acquired such confidence in their ability 
to use the language that they dropped the customary practice of 
translating all their business into several languages and took to 
using English only. 

[204] 



mon-sense systems of organization, did the rest. 
Gradually the great armies of linguistically, relig- 
iously, racially divided steel workers were united 
into the mighty force which threw itself against the 
Steel Trust. In the main the foreign workers were 
simple, sincere, earnest minded folk, naturally dis- 
posed to co-operative effort. While the individual- 
istic, sophisticated American workers all too often 
attended the ball games and filled the pool rooms, 
the foreigners packed the union meeting halls. 
Their worst fault was a woeful unacquaintance with 
trade-union methods. This the organizers diligently 
labored to overcome by patient instruction and a 
faithful attendance to their duties. The general re- 
sult was that the foreign workers developed a con- 
fidence in the organizers and a loyalty to the unions, 
which not even the heavy shock of the loss of the 
strike has been able to destroy. 



The indifference, verging often into open hostility, 
with which negroes generally regard Organized 
Labor's activities, manifested itself strongly in the 
steel campaign. Those employed in the industry 
were extremely resistent to the trade-union program ; 
those on the outside allowed themselves to be used 
freely as strike-breakers. 

According to the Immigration Commission's Re- 
port, which furnished the latest official figures 
(period 1907-08), 4.7 per cent, of the total number 
of steel industry employees at that time were 
negroes, most of whom were located in the Alabama 
and Maryland districts. Since then, however, con- 

[205] 



siderable additions to their numbers have been made, 
and in many northern mills will be found groups 
of them, ranging in strength from i to 20 per 
cent, of the whole working force. They work mostly 
at hard, rough, unskilled labor, especially in the 
blast furnace department. 

Generally speaking, these bodies of negroes took 
small part in the movement. In certain districts, 
notably Cleveland and Wheeling, it is true that they 
organized 100 per cent, and struck very creditably; 
but in most places, and exactly those where their 
support was needed the worst, they made a wretched 
showing. Consider the situation, for instance, in 
the Homestead Steel Works. In these plants (in- 
cluding the Carrie Furnaces at Rankin) , of the 
14,687 employees, 1,737 are negroes. Making de- 
ductions for office forces, bosses, etc., this would 
make them from 12 to 14 per cent, of the actual 
workers, a most important factor indeed. During 
the organizing campaign, of all these men, only eight 
joined the unions. And of these but one struck. 
He, however, stayed loyally to the finish. The de- 
gree of this abstention from the movement may be 
gauged when it is recalled that of the white un- 
skilled workers in the same plants at least 75 per 
cent, joined the unions, and 90 per cent, struck. 

Throughout the immediate Pittsburgh district, 
where the unions operated under such great handi- 
caps and had to rely so much on the initiative of 
the individual workers, the same condition prevailed. 
In Duquesne, of 344 negroes employed, not one 
struck; in Clairton, of 300, six joined the unions and 
struck for two weeks. Of the several hundred work- 

[206] 



ing in the Braddock plants, not one joined a union 
or went on strike; and a dozen would cover those 
from the large number employed in the mills in 
Pittsburgh proper who walked out with the 25,000 
whites on September 22. Similar tendencies were 
shown in the Chicago, Youngstown, Buffalo, Pueblo, 
Sparrows' Point and other districts. In the entire 
steel industry, the negroes, beyond compare, gave 
the movement less co-operation than any other ele- 
ment, skilled or unskilled, foreign or native. 

Those on the outside of the industry seemed 
equally unsympathetic. National Committee secre- 
taries' reports indicate that the Steel Trust recruited 
and shipped from 30,000 to 40,000 negroes into the 
mills as strike-breakers. Many of these were picked 
up in Northern cities, but the most of them came 
from the SoutH. They were used in all the large 
districts and were a big factor in breaking the strike. 
The following statement illustrates some of the 
methods used in securing and handling them: 

Monessen, November 23, 19 19 

Eugene Steward — Age 19 — • Baltimore, Md. 

My native place is Charleston, South Carolina. 

I arrived in Monessen on Wednesday, November 19. 
There were about 200 of us loaded in the cars at 
Baltimore ; some were white ; and when we were loaded 
in the cars were told that we were being taken to 
Philadelphia. 

We were not told that a strike was in progress. We 
were promised $4.00 a day, with the understanding that 
we should be boarded at $1.00 a day. 

When we took the train a guard locked the doors 
so that we were unable to get out, and no meals were 

[207], 



given us on the way, although we were promised board. 
We were unloaded at Lock 4 and had a guard placed 
over us, and were then marched into the grounds of the 
Pittsburgh Steel Products Co. We were then told to 
go to work, and when I found out that there was a 
strike on I got out. They refused to let me out at the 
gate when I protested about working, and I climbed 
over the fence, and they caught me and compelled me 
to go back and sign a paper and told me that I would 
have to go to work. I told them that I would not go 
to work if they kept me there two years. I was placed 
on a boat. There were about 200 other people there. 
The guards informed me that if I made any attempt 
to again run away that they would shoot me. I got 
a rope and escaped, as I will not work to break the 
strike. 

his 
Eugene X Steward 
mark 
Witness Jacob S. McGinley 

Few, however, of the imported negro strike- 
breakers showed the splendid spirit of this unlettered 
boy. Most of them seemed to take a keen delight 
in stealing the white men's jobs and crushing their 
strike. They clashed badly with the pickets, where 
picketing was allowed. And between them and the 
white strike-breakers many murderous encounters oc- 
curred in the mills, although the companies were very 
careful to suppress news of these outbreaks. 

So serious was the race situation in the steel strike 
that the National Committee for Organizing Iron 
and Steel Workers requested President Gompers to 
arrange a conference between prominent negro 
leaders and trade-union officials, to the end that the 

[208] 



proper remedies may be indicated. The need for 
action looking towards better relations between 
whites and blacks in the industrial field should be 
instantly patent ; for there can be no doubt but that 
the employing class, taking advantage of the bitter 
animosities of the two groups, are deliberately at- 
tempting to turn the negroes into a race of strike- 
breakers, with whom to hold the white workers in 
check; on much the same principle as the Czars 
used the Cossacks to keep in subjection the balance 
of the Russian people. Should they succeed to any 
degree it would make our industrial disputes take on 
more and more the character of race wars, a con- 
summation that would be highly injurious to the 
white workers and eventually ruinous to the blacks. 
For the tense situation existing the unions are 
themselves in no small part to blame. Many of 
them sharply draw the color line, thus feeding the 
flames of race hatred. This discriminatory prac- 
tice is in direct conflict with the fundamental which 
demands that all the workers be organized, without 
regard to sex, race, creed, politics or nationality. 
It injures Labor's cause greatly. Company agents 
harp upon it continually, to prevent negroes from 
joining even the organizations willing to take them 
in. This was the case in the steel compaign. More- 
over these same company agents cited this discrim- 
inatory practice most effectively to induce thousands 
of outside colored workers to come into the industry 
as strike-breakers. Such a condition cannot be al- 
lowed to persist. But to relieve it the unions will 
have to meet the issue honestly and broad-mindedly. 
They must open their ranks to negroes, make an 

[209] 



earnest effort to organize them, and then give them 
a square deal when they do join. Nothing short of 
this will accomplish the desired result. 1 

This action by the unions will be a step in the 
right direction, but it alone will not solve the vexed 
problem. The best negro leaders must join heartily 
in destroying the pernicious anti-union policies so 
deeply rooted among their people. It is a lament- 
able fact, well known to all organizers who have 
worked in industries employing considerable numbers 
of negroes, that there is a large and influential black 
leadership, including ministers, politicians, editors, 
doctors, lawyers, social workers, etc., who as a mat- 
ter of race tactics are violently opposed to their peo- 
ple going into the trade unions. They look upon 
strike-breaking as a legitimate and effective means 
of negro advancement. Time and again, they have 
seen their people, by use of it, readily work their 
way into trades and industries previously firmly 
sealed against them by the white workers' and white 
employers' prejudices. Nor can they see any wrong 
in thus taking advantage of the white man, who has 
so brutally oppressed them for centuries. On the 
contrary, they consider it a justified retaliation. 
They are in a race war. Inasmuch as the steel 
strike resulted in more negroes being in the industry 
than was the case before, they look upon the outcome 
as a victory. For these elements, and they are 
numerous and powerful among negroes, the color 

x The Miners, Building Laborers and several other unions are 
taking the lead in this direction and are getting good results. 
Negroes are joining their ranks in considerable numbers and are 
proving themselves to be excellent union men. 

[210], 



line clauses in the union constitutions are meat and 
drink; such leaders don't want them abolished, — 
they make too strong an argument against the unions. 

Consider the situation faced by the unions in the 
campaign to organize the Chicago packing houses 
in 19 17-18. The negroes in this industry are a 
strong factor (numbering 14,000 of a total of some 
65,000 employees), and the unions were determined 
to organize them. But no sooner had organizers 
begun the work than they met the firm opposition of 
the negro intelligencia above-noted. These warned 
their people to have nothing to do with the move- 
ment, as their interest lay in working with the 
packers to defeat the unions. They said that was 
how the negroes came into the packing industry, 
and that was how they would progress in it. 

Naturally, they repeated the accusations about 
white men not taking negroes in their unions, a 
charge which was not true in the packing industry. 
The organizers replied by launching a vigorous cam- 
paign to get them into the unions. Then the propa- 
ganda was sent forth that the only reason the whites 
were willing to take the blacks into their locals was 
because the latter, being in a minority, could exert 
no control; that the whites would not dare to give 
them a local of their own, etc. This was met by 
the establishment of a negro local of miscellaneous 
workers in a convenient neighborhood. Then the 
Jim Crow cry was raised that the whites wanted the 
blacks to herd by themselves. This the organizers 
answered by insisting that a free transfer system 
be kept up between the white and black locals. 

[211] 



These were affiliated with the basic organization of 
the industry, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and 
Butcher Workmen of North America. 

But even this did not satisfy; the anti-union propa- 
ganda went on undiminished and with tremendous 
effect. It is true that some far-sighted negro intel- 
lectuals defended the unions; but they were as men 
crying in the wilderness ; the others prevailed. And 
although the unions kept a crew of negro organizers 
in the field, and won many concessions for the pack- 
ing house workers, including the eight hour day, 
right of collective bargaining, large increases in 
wages, 40 hour weekly guarantee, retro-active pay, 
seniority rights, etc., they have never succeeded in 
organizing the negroes. 

They know little of the race problem in industry 
who declare that it can be settled merely by the 
unions opening their doors to the negroes. It is 
much more complex than that, and will require the 
best thought that conscientious whites and blacks can 
give it. The negro has the more difficult part to 
solve, in resisting the insidious efforts of unscrupu- 
lous white employers and misguided intellectuals of 
his own race to make a professional strike-breaker of 
him. But I am confident that he will win out and 
will take his place where he belongs in the industrial 
fight, side by side with the white worker. 



[212] 



XII 

THE COMMISSARIAT — THE STRIKE 

COST 

THE RELIEF ORGANIZATION — RATIONS — SYSTEM 
OF DISTRIBUTION — COST OF COMMISSARIAT — 

STEEL STRIKE RELIEF FUND COST OF THE 

STRIKE TO THE WORKERS, THE EMPLOYERS, THE 
PUBLIC, THE LABOR MOVEMENT 

In all strikes the problem of keeping the wolf from 
the door is a pressing one. Usually it is met by the 
unions involved paying regular benefits of from $5.00 
to $15.00 per week to each striker. But in the steel 
strike this was out of the question. 1 The tremen- 
dous number of men on strike and the scanty funds 
available utterly forbade it. To have paid such 
benefits would have required the impossible sum of 
at least $2,000,000 per week. Therefore, the best 
that could be done was to assist those families on the 
brink of destitution by furnishing them free that 
most basic of human necessities, food. Ordinarily 
in strikes the main body of men are able to take care 
of themselves over an extended period. The 

1 Exceptions to this were the cases of the Molders' and Coopers' 
Unions. These organizations were compelled by constitutional re- 
quirements to pay regular strike benefits. But they included only a 
very small percentage of the total number of strikers. 

[213] 



danger point is in the poverty-stricken minority. 
From them come the hunger-driven scabs who so 
demoralize and discourage the men still out. 
Hence, to take care of this weaker element was 
scientifically to strengthen the steel strike, and to 
make the best use of the resources available. 

The great mass of strikers and their incomplete 
organization making it manifestly impossible for 
each union to segregate and take care of its own 
members, the internationals affiliated with the Na- 
tional Committee (with the two exceptions noted) 
pooled their strike funds and formed a joint com- 
missariat. 1 They then proceeded to extend relief 
to all needy strikers, regardless of their trades or 
callings, or even membership or non-membership in 
the unions. To get relief all that was necessary was 
to be a steel striker and in want. This splendid 
solidarity and rapid modification of trade-union tac- 
tics and institutions to meet an emergency is probably 
without a parallel in American labor annals. 

The commissariat was entirely under the super- 
vision and direction of the National Committee. Its 
national headquarters was in Pittsburgh, with a sub- 
district in Chicago. Goods were shipped from these 
two points. In Pittsburgh they were bought and 
handled through the Tri-State Co-operative Associa- 
tion, with National Committee employees making 
up the shipments. In Chicago the same was done 
through the National Co-operative Association. 
As Bethlehem, Birmingham, Pueblo and a few other 

^^The commissariat was suggested by John Fitzpatrick, as a re- 
sult of his experiences in the Chicago Garment Workers' strike of a 
decade ago. 

[214] 



strike-bound towns lay beyond convenient shipping 
distance from the two distributing points, the men 
in charge there were sent checks and they bought 
their supplies locally. 

The General Director of the commissariat was 
Robert McKechan, business manager of the Central 
States Wholesale Co-operative Association. He 
was paid by the Illinois Miners, District No. 2. He 
was ably assisted by A. V. Craig (Ass't. Director), 
Enoch Martin (Auditor — also paid by Illinois 
miners), Wm. Orr (Warehouse Manager), and E. 
G. Craig. Secretary De Young was in charge of the 
Chicago sub-district. The local distributing centres 
were operated altogether by National Committee 
local secretaries and volunteer strike committees, 
with an occasional paid assistant. 

All told, 45 local commissaries were set up 
throughout the strike zone. This elaborate organ- 
ization was created and put in motion almost over 
night. Within a week after Mr. McKechan arrived 
in Pittsburgh, he and officials of the National Com- 
mittee had devised the commissary system — with 
hardly a precedent to go by, — organized its nation- 
wide machinery, and started the first shipment en 
route to the many strike centres. To break in this 
machinery, a small pro rata of provisions, based 
upon the number of men on strike, was sent to each 
place. The following week this was doubled, and 
each succeeding week it was increased to keep pace 
with the growing need. It finally developed into a 
huge affair. Few strikers had to be turned away 
for lack of food, and these only for a short while 
until the necessary additional stuff could be secured 

[215] 



from the shipping points. Throughout the four- 
teen weeks it was in operation the commissariat, des- 
pite the tremendous difficulties it had to contend 
with, worked with remarkable smoothness. It was 
one of the greatest achievements of the entire steel 
campaign. 

The wide extent of the relief work made it neces- 
sary to develop the most rigid simplicity and stand- 
ardization in the apportionment of food to the 
strikers. Hence, only two sizes of rations could be 
used; one for families of five or less, and the other 
for families of six or more. These were varied 
from time to time, always bearing in mind the cook- 
ing facilities of the strikers and the many food likes 
and dislikes of the various nationalities. To facili- 
tate the carrying away of the food and to make it 
last the better, two commissary days were held each 
week, in each locality. The rations were listed on 
large posters (white for families of five or less, and 
green for families of six or more) which were prom- 
inently displayed in the local commissaries in order 
that the strikers could see exactly how much pro- 
visions they were entitled to. The following are 
typical rations: 

FAMILIES OF FIVE OR LESS 

First Half Week Second Half Week 

Potatoes 15 lbs. Bread 4 loaves 

Bread 4 loaves Tomatoes 1 can 

Tomatoes 1 can Corn 1 " 

Peas 1 " Peas 1 " 

Navy beans 4 lbs. Red beans 4 lbs. 

Oatmeal 1 box Kraut 2 cans 

Bacon 1 lb. Dry salt meat 1 lb. 

Coffee 1 " Syrup 1 can 

Milk 1 can 

[216] 




JOHN FITZPATRICK 

Chairman^ National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers, 



FAMILIES OF SIX OR MORE 

Second Half Week 

Potatoes 10 lbs. 

Bread 5 loaves 

Tomatoes 1 can 

Corn 1 " 

Peas 1 " 

Kraut 2 cans 

Red beans 5 lbs. 

Dry salt meat 1 lb. 

Milk 1 can 

Syrup x " 



First H; 


ilf Week 


Potatoes 


10 lbs. 


Bread 


5 loaves 


Tomatoes 


1 can 


Corn 


1 " 


Peas 


1 " 


Navy beans . . . 


< lbs. 


Oatmeal 


2 boxes 


Bacon 


1 lb. 


Coffee 


1 " 


Milk 


1 can 



It was not contended that these rations were 
enough to sustain completely the recipients' families; 
but they helped mightily. Few, if any, went hungry. 
Single men in need received a half week's rations to 
last the week. The greatest care was taken to have 
the supplies of the best quality and in good condition. 
Whatever the unions gave they wanted the strikers 
to understand was in the best spirit of brotherly 
solidarity. 1 

The provisions were distributed strictly according 
to the following card system: 

1. Identification card: An applicant requesting 
relief would be referred to a credentialed volunteer 
relief committee. If this committee deemed the 
case a needy one, it would issue the striker an identifi- 
cation card. This he was required to show when 
dealing at the commissary. 

1 In addition to the regular commissaries, the local organizations, 
grace to their own funds or occasional donations from their inter- 
national unions, had relief enterprises of various sorts, such as soup 
kitchens, milk, clothes, rent and sickness funds. In Monessen and 
Donora the strikers actually served a big turkey dinner on Thanks- 
giving Day. Strikers paid five cents a plate for all they wished to 
eat. Sympathizers donated liberally according to their means. But 
the commissary system was the main source of strike relief. 

[217] 



2. Record card: In addition, the relief commit- 
tee would write out the data of the case upon a 
record card and turn it over to the local secretary 
in charge of the commissary, who would keep it 
on file. 

3. Commissary card: When the applicant pre- 
sented his identification card at the commissary, the 
local secretary, referring to the record card on file, 
would make him out a commissary card, white or 
green, accordingly as his family was of five or less, 
or six or more members. This commissary card 
entitled him to draw supplies. 

The commissary card had a stub attached. When 
a striker got his first half week's supplies, this stub 
would be detached and retained by the commissary 
clerk. Upon his next visit the body of the card 
would be taken up. Two important purposes were 
served by this collection of the commissary cards — 
rather than having permanent cards and merely 
punching them. First, the canceled cards being 
sent to the commissariat national headquarters, it 
proved conclusively that the strikers had actually re- 
ceived the provisions shipped to the district; and 
second, by compelling the strikers to get new com- 
missary cards each week, it enabled the local secre- 
taries to keep in close touch with those on the relief 
roll. 

To lighten the load upon the many inexperienced 
men working in the various commissaries, a special 
effort was made to do as much of the technical work 
as possible in the main offices of the National Com- 
mittee. Otherwise the commissariat could not pos- 
sibly have succeeded. This consideration was a 

[218] 



prime factor in restricting the buying of provisions 
to Pittsburgh, Chicago and the fewest practical 
number of outlying points. It also caused the adop- 
tion of the package system, all bulk goods, except 
potatoes, being prepared for delivery before leaving 
the warehouses. Likewise, the local bookkeeping 
was simplified to the last degree. In fact, for the 
most part the secretaries in charge of the commis- 
saries hardly needed books at all. The whole sys- 
tem checked itself from the central points. 

As an example of its working, let us suppose that 
the allotment of a certain town was iooo rations. 
Accordingly, there would be shipped to that place 
exactly enough of each article to precisely cover 
the allotted number of rations. Then, if the secre- 
tary simply saw to it that he got what he was charged 
with and issued his supplies carefully in the right 
proportions, the whole transaction would balance 
to a pound, with hardly a scratch of a pen from 
him. The bookkeeping was all done at the general 
offices. The latter's assurances that each striker 
had received his proper ration and that the right 
number of rations had been issued were, in the first 
place, the ration posters hanging on the walls of the 
commissary; and in the second, the returned can- 
celed commissary cards. Barring an occasional 
slight disruption from delayed shipments, spoiled 
goods, shortages, and a little carelessness here and 
there, the system worked very well. 

The commissariat was in operation from October 
26 until January 31, three weeks after the strike 
had ended. It was continued through this extra 
period in order to help to their feet the destitute 

[219J 



strikers who had fought so nobly. Probably noth- 
ing done by the unions in the entire campaign won 
them so much good will with the steel workers as 
this one act. 

The total cost of operating the commissariat was 
$348,509.42. The significance of this figure stands 
out when it is reduced to a per man basis. At the 
strike's start there were 365,600 men out, and at its 
finish about 100,000. Considering that few serious 
breaks occurred until the eighth to tenth weeks, a fair 
average for the whole period would be about 250,- 
000. Accordingly, this would give (disregarding 
the three weeks after January 8) a total relief cost 
of a fraction less than $1.40 per man for the entire 
fifteen weeks of the strike, or about one day's strike 
benefits of an ordinary union. Reduced to a weekly 
basis, it amounts to*but 9^3 cents for each striker. 
Just how unusually small this sum is may be judged 
from the fact that the International Molders' Union 
paid the few men it had on strike regular benefits 
of $9.00 per week after the first week. The fact 
is that, except for a small, impoverished minority, 
the steel workers made their long, hard fight virtu- 
ally upon their own resources. 1 

To help finance the commissariat the American 
Federation of Labor was requested to issue a gen- 
eral appeal for funds, which it did. Then, to add 
force to this call, the National Committee recruited 
and put in the field a corps of solicitors, including 
among others, Anton Johannson, J. D. Cannon, 

1 It is true, as noted above, that several other unions besides the 
Molders and Coopers made occasional contributions to their strike- 
bound locals, but when measured against the vast armies of strikers, 
these funds dwindled almost into insignificance. 

[220] 



J. W. Brown, J. G. Sause, Jennie Matyas and G. A. 
Gerber. At a meeting in Madison Square Garden 
on November 8 a collection of $150,000 was taken 
up. Many local unions, notably those of Altoona, 
Pa., gave half their local treasuries and assessed 
their members one day's pay each. The Marine 
Engineers, local 33 of New York, contributed 
$10,000; the International Fur Workers' Union 
$20,000; the International Ladies Garment Work- 
ers' Union, $60,000; and the Amalgamated Cloth- 
ing Workers of America, $100,000. All these 
donations were highly praiseworthy, but especially 
the last one mentioned, because the organization 
making it is not affiliated to, nor even in good grace 
with, the A. F. of L. 

The total amount collected and turned over to 
the National Committee was $418,141.14. This 
more than covered the entire cost of the commis- 
sariat, leaving $69,631.42 to be applied to other 
expenses. Thus, taking them as a whole, the co- 
operating international unions in the National Com- 
mittee were not required to pay a penny to the feed- 
ing of the strikers and their families. The com- 
missariat was a monument to the solidarity of Labor 
generally with the embattled steel workers. 

Naturally, the employers bitterly hated the com- 
missaries. They sneered at the quantity and qual- 
ity of the food given out by them, and in many 
places printed handbills in several languages advis- 
ing the strikers to go at once to union headquarters 
and demand strike benefits in cash. And by the 
same token, the strikers held the commissaries in 
high esteem. The foreign-born among them espe- 

[221] 



cially, would stand around watching with never-ceas- 
ing wonder and enthusiasm the stream of men and 
women coming forth laden with supplies. To them 
there was something sacred about the food. Many 
of them in desperate circumstances had to be prac« 
tically compelled to accept it; not because they felt 
themselves objects of charity, but because they 
thought others needed help worse than they. They 
conceived the whole thing as a living demonstration 
of the solidarity of labor. The giving of the food 
produced an effect upon their morale far better than 
could have come from the distribution of ten times 
its value in money. The commissariat enormously 
strengthened the strikers. Without it the strike 
would have collapsed many weeks before it did. 
Unions in future great walkouts will do well to study 
the steel strike commissary plan. 



Strikes, even the smallest, affect so many people 
in so many ways that it is difficult under the best 
of circumstances to compile accurate data upon their 
cost. In the case of the steel strike it is next to 
impossible to do so. The great number of steel 
companies and the armies of men involved; the wide 
scope of the strike; the condition of outlawry in 
many steel districts; the fact that the strike was lost; 
the workers' numerous nationalities and imperfec- 
tion of organization — all these and various other 
factors make it exceedingly difficult, at least at this 
early date, to give more than a hint of the strike's 
cost. 

In the steel strike, as in all others, the burden of 
suffering fell to the workers' lot. To win their 

[222] 



cause they gave freely of their lives, liberty, blood 
and treasure. A poll of the National Committee 
local secretaries yields the following list of strike 
dead: 

Buffalo . . ..••; 2 

Chicago i 

Cleveland •. .. I 

Farrell 4 

Hammond 4 

Newcastle ,. .. 2 

Pittsburgh I 

West Natrona 2 

Wheeling I 

Youngstown 2 

Total 20 

The killed were all on the strikers' side, except 
two. The above list properly includes Mrs. Fannie 
Sellins. But it does not include the scores of scabs 
who, because of their own or other incompetent 
workers' ineptness, were roasted, crushed to death, 
or torn to pieces in the dangerous steel-making pro- 
cesses during the strike. Although the steel com- 
panies were exceedingly alert in suppressing the 
names of these ignoble victims to their greed, it is 
a well-known fact that there were many of them. 
There was hardly a big mill anywhere that did not 
have several to its account. 

How many hundreds of strikers were seriously in- 
jured by being clubbed and shot will never be known, 
because most of them, especially in Pennsylvania, 
healed themselves as best they might. With good 
grounds they feared that disclosing their injuries 

[223] 



to doctors would lead to their arrest upon charges 
of rioting. The number of arrested strikers ran 
into the thousands. But so orderly were the strikers 
that few serious charges could be brought against 
them. They were jailed in droves and fined heavily 
mostly for minor u offenses." Except in Butler, 
Pa., where a score of strikers were arrested for 
stopping a car of scabs on the way to work (framed- 
up by the State Police) and sent to the penitentiary, 
no strikers anywhere in the whole strike zone re- 
ceived heavy jail sentences. Considering the ter- 
rific provocations offered the men and the extreme 
eagerness with which the courts punished them, this 
remarkable record is an eloquent testimonial to their 
orderliness. 1 Of course, the companies did not 
neglect to avail themselves of the heartless black- 
list. Just now hundreds of their former employees, 
denied work and forced to break up their homes and 
leave town, are criss-crossing the country looking 
for opportunities to make new starts in life. 

As for the cost to the strikers in wages, the Phila- 
delphia Public Ledger of January 10, two days after 
the strike was called off, carried a special telegram 
from Pittsburgh, stating (authority not quoted) that 
the wage loss in that district was $48,005,060.35, 
specified as follows: 

^^This was largely because the men "were sober. In fact, prohi- 
bition helped the steel campaign in several important respects; (i) 
because having no saloons to drown their troubles in, the workers, 
clear-headed, attended the union meetings and organized more 
readily; (2) when the strike came they did not waste their few 
pennies on liquor and then run back to work in the old way; they 
bought food with them and stayed on strike; (3) being sober, they 
were the better able to avoid useless violence and to conduct their 
strike effectively. 

[224] 



Clarksburg, W. Va $310,000.00 

Wheeling District 6,100,000.00 

Donora , 1,200,000.00 

Steubenville dist. . . , 2,260,000.00 

Youngstown . . . . 15,500,000.00 

Monessen 2,660,000.00 

Brackenridge 450,000.00 

New Kensington 375,000.00 

McKeesport 597,869.00 

Port Vue 900,000.00 

Sharon-Farrell 1,250,000.00 

New Castle 705,000.00 

Homestead 737,840.00 

Duquesne 55,030.00 

Johnstown 5,712,321.35 

Ellwood City 35,000.00 

Butler 1,450,000.00 

Aliquippa , 10,000.00 

Pittsburgh 5,715,000.00 

Sharpsburg, iEtna 435,000.00 

Vandergrift 357,000.00 

Clairton 165,000.00 

Rankin 375,000.00 

Braddock 650,000.00 

To the above, the New York Herald of January 
12 editorially adds an estimate of $39,000,000 for 
steel districts other than Pittsburgh, making a grand 
total of $87,000,000 as the strikers' wage loss. 
But these figures, bearing the earmarks of Steel 
Trust origin, are too low. On the basis of the 
minimum figures of an average of 250,000 strikers 
for 90 working days (actual strike length 108 days) 
at $5.00 per day per man, we arrive at a total of 
$112,500,000.00, or $450.00 per average striker, 

[225] 



4 



Doubtless these figures are also too low, but they 
will serve to indicate the tremendous sums of money 
the already poverty-stricken steel workers were 
willing to sacrifice in order to change the conditions 
which Mr. Gary so glowingly paints as ideal. 

The loss to the steel companies must have been 
enormous. Without doubt it runs into several 
hundred millions of dollars. The items going to 
make up this huge bill are many and at this time 
impossible of accurate estimate. There must have 
been not only a complete cessation of profits during 
the strike period, but also a vast outlay of money 
to finance the strike-breaking measures, such as 
maintaining scores of thousands of gunmen to guard 
the plants; paying rich graft to employment offices 
and detective agencies for recruiting armies of scabs, 
who, receiving high strike wages, idled for weeks 
around the plants, shooting craps, playing cards, 
pitching quoits, and absolutely refusing to work; 
keeping on the payroll great staffs of office workers 
with nothing to do, and high paid skilled workers 
doing the work of common laborers; corrupting po- 
lice and court officials to give the strikers the worst 
of it, etc., etc. Besides, there should be added the 
cost of repairing the great injuries done the fur- 
naces by their sudden shutting down, this item alone 
amounting to many millions of dollars. But a more 
important factor than all, perhaps, in counting the 
cost of the strike to the companies was the serious 
injury done to their wonderful producing organiza- 
tion by the permanent loss of thousands of com- 
petent men who have quitted the industry; the dis- 
location of many thousands more from jobs for 

[226] 



which they were well fitted and the substitution in 
their places of green men; the lowering of the men's 
morale generally, due to disappointment and bitter- 
ness at the loss of the strike, etc. We may depend 
upon it that the companies, following out their policy 
of minimizing the strike's effects, will so juggle their 
financial and tonnage statements as to make it im- 
possible for years to figure out what it really cost 
them, if it can ever be done. 

The cost to the people at large is indicated by 
the New York Sun, quoted by the Literary Digest, 
January 31, 1920, as follows: 

There was the loss to the railroads not only in freights 
from the steel plants, but in freights from general mills 
and factories which, failing to get their steel supplies, 
could not maintain their production and fulfill their 
own deliveries. There was the loss in wages in such 
mills and factories due to that failure to get their 
material on which their wage-earners could work. 
There was the loss in such communities to trade folk 
whose customers thus had their spending power re- 
duced by the steel strike. — Hence this loss of steel 
tonnage begins at once to widen until the loss eventually 
could be figured in the billions. 

For the privilege of having an autocracy in the 
steel industry the American people pay not only 
huge costs in unearned dividends each year, but also, 
occasionally, such monster special charges as the 
above. Garyism is an expensive luxury. 

The foregoing figures and statements merely serve 
to point out the immensity of the steel strike by 
indicating its approximate cost to the strikers, the 

[227] 



steel companies, and the public. Admittedly they 
are but loose estimates, based upon scanty data. 
Absolute accuracy is not claimed for them. The ex- 
penditures of the labor movement in the campaign 
can be more closely calculated, although they, too, 
are far from definite. They fall into three general 
classes: (i) those by the general office of the Na- 
tional Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel 
Workers; (2) those by the A. F. of L. and co-oper- 
ating international steel trades unions not through 
the office of the National Committee; (3) those by 
local steel workers' councils and unions from their 
own treasuries. Of these the latter may be elimi- 
nated as impossible of estimation, there being so many 
local organizations involved and the after-strike con- 
ditions so unfavorable to statistics gathering. 
They were a minor element of expense compared 
to the other two, which we will try to approximate 
as closely as may be. 

1. From the beginning of the steel campaign, 
August 1, 19 1 8, until January 31, 1920, the total 
net disbursements of the National Committee for all 
purposes, after making deductions for refunds, trans- 
fers, etc., amounted to $525,702.72. This stretch 
of time may be divided into two parts: (a) Organ- 
izing period, from August 1, 19 18, until September 
22, 1919 — during which time virtually all the 
250,000 men enrolled in the campaign (see end of 
Chapter VII) had joined the unions; (b), Strike 
period, from September 22, 19 19, until January 31, 
1920 — during which time the heavy special strike 
expenses were incurred. This period is extended 

[228] 



three weeks past the date of the strike's close, be- 
cause the commissariat was still in operation and 
other important strike expenses were going on. 

The total net disbursements made by the National 
Committee during the organizing period were 
$73,139.66, which amounts to a small fraction over 
29 cents for each of the 250,000 men organized. 
The total net disbursements of the National Com- 
mittee during the strike period were $452,563.06, or 
$1.81 for each of the 250,000 average strikers. 
Adding these two figures together gives $2.10 as the 
cost to the National Committee of organizing each 
steel worker and taking care of him during the whole 
strike. 

2. The disbursements of the National Committee 
covered general organizing and strike expenses, such 
as commissary, legal, rent, printing, salaries, etc. 
The A. F. of L. and the co-operating international 
unions also incurred heavy expenses upon their own 
account, whose chief items were for keeping organ- 
izers in the field, paying strike benefits, and making 
lump donations to strike-bound local unions. At this 
date these expenditures may be only approximated. 

For the above bodies almost the sole expense dur- 
ing the organizing period was for maintaining organ- 
izers. Forty would be a fair average of the number 
of these men actually kept at the steel industry work. 
In the earlier part of the campaign the number was 
far less; in the later part, considerably more. The 
cost of maintaining them per month may be set at not 
more than $400.00 each, for salaries and general 
expenses. Thus, for the 13^4 months of the organ- 

[229] 



izing period the expense to the A. F. of L. and co- 
operating unions for this item would be about 
$220,000, or 88 cents per man organized. This is 
a top figure. 

During the strike period, on an average, 75 organ- 
izers were kept in the field by these bodies. Due to 
increases in wages, etc., their upkeep should be calcu- 
lated at about $500.00 per month each. For 4^4 
months, September 22 to January 31, our strike 
period, this would amount to $159,375. To this 
should be added $100,000, which according to re- 
ports received approximates what the organizations 
paid in strike benefits and donations direct to their 
strikers and not through the office of the National 
Committee. This would make their total expendi- 
tures for the strike period $259,375, or slightly less 
than $1.04 per striker. Adding together the 
amounts for the organizing period and the strike 
period, we arrive at a grand total of $479,375, or 
$1.92 per man, spent during the entire campaign by 
the A. F. of L. and co-operating internationals. 

The figures for the A. F. of L. and co-operating 
internationals are estimates* — the constant shifting 
of organizers during the campaign, their widely 
varying rates of pay, etc., making accuracy impos- 
sible. But from my knowledge of what went on I 
will venture that the figures cited are close enough 
to the reality to give a fair conception of this class 
of expenditures. 

Combining the National Committee expenditures 
with those of the A. F. of L. and co-operating unions, 
we arrive at the following totals: 

[230] 



Organizing Period: 

Expenditures Per Man 

By Nat. Com $ 73,1 39-66 $.29 

By A. F. L. & Unions.. 220,000.00 .88 

Total cost of organizing work $293,139.66 $i«i7 

Strike Period: 

By Nat. Com $452,563.06 $1.81 

By A. F. L. & Unions.. 259,375.00 1.04 



Total cost of strike $711,938.06 $2.85 

Whole Campaign: 

Total cost to Nat. Com., 



A. F. L. & Unions $1,005,007.72 $4.02 

In order to approximate more closely the actual 
cost of the campaign to the A. F. of L. and the 
twenty-four co-operating internationals forming the 
National Committee, the total of $479,375, figured 
in a previous paragraph as their independent expend- 
itures, must be increased by $101,047.52, the amount 
they contributed directly to the National Committee 
for organizing and for strike expenses during the 
course of the campaign; * making a grand total out- 

1 This sum represents the actual cash given by these affiiliated 
organizations directly to the National Committee throughout the 
entire movement. It divides itself as follows: 

Blacksmiths $ 6,273.28 

Boilermakers 10,448.92 

Bricklayers 4,199.05 

P. & S. Iron Workers 7>335-78 

Coopers 907.76 

Electrical Workers 6,138.80 

Engineers * 100.00 

Firemen 2,395.53 

Foundry Employees 1,030.51 

Hod Carriers 1,350.00 

Iron, Steel and Tin Workers 11,881.81 

Machinists 16,622.33 

Mine, Mill, Smelter Workers 3>5&3-53 

[ 2 30 



lay for them of $580,422.52. This in turn should 
be reduced by $118,451.23, the amount in the Na- 
tional Committee treasury on January 31, 1920. 
Against the remaining $461,971.29 must be checked 
off what the steel workers paid into these organiza- 
tions in initiation fees and dues. 

Inasmuch as the co-operating internationals re- 
ceived directly $1.00 to $2.00 (mostly the latter) 
from the initiation fees of the approximately 250,- 
000 steel workers signed up during the campaign, 
not to speak of thousands of dollars in per capita 
tax from armies of dues payers over a period of 
many months, it is safe to say that their net outlay 
of $461,971.29 would be nearly if not altogether off- 
set by their income. It is true that some of the or- 
ganizations, like the Miners and the A. F. of L. it- 
self made large expenditures, with little return; and 
that others, like the Structural Iron Workers, broke 
about even ; while the Amalgamated Association put 
a huge sum in its treasury. All things considered, 
taking the twenty-four organizations as a whole, one 
is not much wrong in saying that so far as their 
national treasuries were concerned, the great move- 
ment of the steel workers, including the organizing 

Mine Workers 2,600.00 

Molders 4,199.05 

Pattern Makers 615.52 

Plumbers 2,581.04 

Quarry Workers 412.50 

Railway Carmen 10,448.30 

Seamen 3,081.04 

Switchmen 4,115.52 

Sheet Metal Workers 100.00 

Steam Shovelmen 627.25 

Total .$101,047.52 

[232] 



campaign and the strike, was, financially speaking, 
just about self-sustaining. 

Was the steel strike, then, worth the great suf- 
fering and expenditure of effort that it cost the steel 
workers? I say yes; even though it failed to ac- 
complish the immediate objects it had in view. 
No strike is ever wholly lost. Even the least effec- 
tive of them serve the most useful purpose of check- 
ing the employers' exploitation. They are a protec- 
tion to the workers' standards of life. Better by 
far a losing fight than none at all. An unresisting 
working class would soon find itself on a rice diet. 
But the steel strike has done more than serve merely 
as a warning that the limit of exploitation has been 
reached; it has given the steel workers a confidence 
in their ability to organize and to fight effectively, 
which will eventually inspire them on to victory. 
This precious result alone is well worth all the hard- 
ships the strike cost them. 



[233] 



XIII 
PAST MISTAKES AND FUTURE PROBLEMS 

LABOR'S LACK OF CONFIDENCE — INADEQUATE 
EFFORTS — NEED OF ALLIANCE WITH MINERS 
AND RAILROADERS — RADICAL LEADERSHIP AS A 

STRIKE ISSUE MANUFACTURING REVOLUTIONS 

STRIKES : RAILROAD SHOPMEN, BOSTON POLICE, 

MINERS, RAILROAD YARD AND ROAD MEN DE- 
FECTION OF AMALGAMATED ASSOCIATION 

In preceding chapters I have said much about the 
injustices visited upon the steel workers by the steel 
companies and their minions ; the mayors, burgesses, 
police magistrates, gunmen, State Police, Senate 
Committees, etc. But let there be no mistake. I 
do not blame the failure of the strike upon these 
factors. I put the responsibility upor the shoulders 
of Organized Labor. Had it but stir, ed a little the 
steel workers would have won their battle, despite 
all the Steel Trust could do to prevent it. 

By this I mean no harsh criticism. On the con- 
trary, I am the first to assert that the effort put forth 
in the steel campaign was wonderful, far surpassing 
anything ever done in the industry before, and mark- 
ing a tremendous advance in trade-union tactics. 
Yet it was not enough, and it represented only a 
fraction of the power the unions should and could 
have thrown into the fight. The organization of 

j>34] 



the steel industry should have been a special order 
of business for the whole labor movement. But 
unfortunately it was not. The big men of Labor 
could not be sufficiently awakened to its supreme im- 
portance to induce them to sit determinedly into 
t^e National Committee meetings and to give the 
movement the abundant moral and financial back- 
ing so essential to its success. Official pessimism, 
bred of thirty years of trade-union failure in the steel 
industry, hung like a mill-stone about the neck of the 
movement in all its stages. 

At the very outset this pessimism and lack of faith 
dealt the movement a fatal blow. When the 
unions failed to follow the original plan of the cam- 
paign (outlined in Chapter III) to throw a large 
crew of organizers into the field at the beginning and 
thus force a settlement with the steel companies dur- 
ing war time, as they could easily have done, they 
made a monumental blunder, one for which Organ- 
ized Labor will pay dearly. Notwithstanding all 
their best efforts in the long, bitter organizing cam- 
paign and the r great strike, the organizers could not 
overcome its If ects. It was a lost opportunity that 
unquestionably cost the unionization of the steel in- 
dustry. 

And the same pessimism which caused this original 
deadly mistake made itself felt all through the steel 
campaign, by so restricting the resources furnished 
the National Committee as to practically kill all 
chance of success. Probably no big modern trade- 
union organizing campaign and strike has been con- 
ducted upon such slender means. Considering the 
great number of men involved, the viciousness of the 

[235] 



opposition and the long duration of the movement 
(18 months), the figure cited in the previous chap- 
ter as covering the general expenses, $1,005,007.72, 
is unusually low. It amounts to but $4.02 per man, 
or hardly a half week's strike benefits for each. 
Compared to the sums spent in other industrial 
struggles, it is proportionally insignificant. For ex- 
ample, in the great coal miners' strike in Colorado, 
begun September 23, 19 13, and ended December 10, 
19 14, the United Mine Workers are authoritatively 
stated to have spent about $5,000,000.00 As there 
were on an average about 12,000 strikers, this would 
make the cost somewhere about $400.00 per man in- 
volved. And in those days a dollar was worth twice 
as much as during the steel strike. Had a fraction 
of such amounts been available to the steel workers 
they would have made incomparably a better fight. 

The unions affiliated with the National Committee 
have at least two million members. Even if they 
had spent outright the total sum required to carry 
on the organizing campaign and strike it would not 
have strained them appreciably. But they did not 
spend it, nor any considerable part of it. In the 
previous chapter we have seen that with donations 
from the labor movement at large, and initiation 
fees and dues paid in by the steel workers, the move- 
ment was virtually self-sustaining as far as the co- 
operating unions were concerned — taking them as a 
whole. Now, in the next campaign, all that must 
be different. The unions will have to put some real 
money in the fight. Then they may win it. 

When I say that there was a shortage of resources 
in the steel campaign I include particularly organ- 

[236] 



izers from the respective international unions. Of 
these there were not half enough. Often the Na- 
tional Committee had to beg for weeks to have a 
man sent in to organize a local union, the members 
for which it had already enrolled. Hundreds of 
local unions suffered and many a one perished out- 
right for want of attention. Whole districts had to 
be neglected, with serious consequences when the 
strike came. 

Moreover, the system used by many internationals 
in handling their organizers was wrong. They con- 
trolled them from their several general headquarters, 
shifting them around or pulling them out of the work 
without regard to the needs of the campaign as a 
whole. This tended to create a loose, disjointed, 
undisciplined, inefficient organizing force. It was 
indefensible. Now, in the next drive there are two 
systems which might be used, (i) The interna- 
tional unions could definitely delegate a certain num- 
ber of organizers to the campaign and put them en- 
tirely under the direction of the National Commit- 
tee. This was the plan followed by the A. F. of L., 
the Miners, and the Railway Carmen. It worked 
well and tended to produce a homogeneous, well- 
knit, controllable, efficient organizing force. (2) 
The organizers definitely assigned to the steel cam- 
paign by the internationals could be formed into 
crews, each crew to be controlled by one man and 
charged with looking after the needs of its particu- 
lar trade. The Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, 
Machinists, and Electrical Workers used this sys- 
tem to some extent. A series of such crews, work- 
ing vertically along craft lines while the National 

[237] 



Committee men worked horizontally along indus- 
trial lines, would greatly strengthen the general 
movement. When the strike came it would not only 
be an industrial strike but twenty-four intensified 
craft strikes as well. Of the two systems, the first 
is probably the better, and the second, because of the 
individualism of the unions, the more practical. 
Either of them is miles superior to the plan of con- 
trolling the field organizers from a score of head- 
quarters knowing very little of the real needs of the 
situation. 

But more than men and money, the steel workers 
in their great fight lacked practical solidarity from 
closely related trades. In their semi-organized con- 
dition they were unable to withstand alone the ter- 
rific power of the Steel Trust, backed by the mighty 
capitalistic organizations which rushed to its aid. 
They needed from their organized fellow workers 
help in the same liberal measure as Mr. Gary re- 
ceived from those on his side. And help adequate 
to the task could have come only by extending 
the strike beyond the confines of the steel industry 
proper. 

When the steel unions end their present educa- 
tional campaign and launch the next big drive to or- 
ganize the steel workers (which should be in a year 
or two) they ought to be prepared to meet the 
formidable employer combinations sure to be ar- 
rayed against them by opposing to them still more 
formidable labor combinations. The twenty-four 
unions should by then be so allied with the miners' 
and railroad men's organizations that should it come 
to a strike these two powerful groups of unions 

[238] 



would rally to their aid and paralyse the steel indus- 
try completely by depriving it of those essentials 
without which it cannot operate, fuel and rail trans- 
portation. How effective such assistance would be 
was well indicated by the speedy and wholesale shut- 
ting down of steel mills, first during the general 
strike of bituminous miners in November and Decem- 
ber of 19 19, and then during the " outlaw " railroad 
strike in April, 1920. With such a combination of 
allied steel, mine and railroad workers confronting 
them, there is small likelihood that the steel com- 
panies (or the public at large) would consider the 
question of the steel workers' right to organize of 
sufficient importance to fight about. Mr. Gary 
might then be brought to a realization that this is 
not Czarist Russia, and that the men in his mills 
must be granted their human rights. 

That the miners and railroaders have sufficient in- 
terests at stake to justify their entrance into such a 
combination no union man of heart will attempt to 
deny. Not to speak of the general duty of all 
unionists to extend help to brothers in trouble, the 
above-mentioned groups have the most powerful 
reasons of their own to work for the organization 
of the steel industry. The United States Steel Cor- 
poration and so-called " independent " steel mills 
are the stronghold of industrial autocracy in Amer- 
ica. Every union in the labor movement directly 
suffers their evil effects in lower wages, longer hours 
and more difficult struggles for the right to organize 
than they otherwise would have. No union will be 
safe until these mills are under the banner of Or- 
ganized Labor. Beyond question the organization 

[239] 



of the steel workers would tremendously benefit the 
miners and railroaders. The latter cannot possibly 
do too much to assist in bringing it about. It is their 
own fight. 

For the miners and railroad men to join forces 
with the steel workers would mean no new depar- 
ture in trade-unionism. It would be merely pro- 
ceeding in harmony with the natural evolution con- 
stantly taking place in the labor movement. For 
instance, to go no further than the two industries in 
question, it is only a few years since the miners ne- 
gotiated agreements and struck, district by district. 
Even though one section walked out, the rest would 
remain at work. And as for the railroaders, they 
followed a similar plan upon the basis of one craft 
or one system. Each unit of the two industries felt 
itself to be virtually a thing apart from all the others 
when it came to common action against the em- 
ployers. It was the heyday of particularism, of 
craft unionism complete. And anyone who did not 
think the system represented the acme of trade-union 
methods was considered a crank. But both groups 
of organizations are fast getting away from such in- 
fantile practices. We now find the miners striking 
all over the country simultaneously, and the railroad 
men rigging up such wide-spreading combinations 
among themselves that soon a grievance of a section 
hand in San Diego, California will be the grievance 
of an engineer in Bangor, Maine. The man who 
would advocate a return to the old method of each 
for himself and the devil take the hindmost would be 
looked upon today, to say the least, with grave sus- 
picion. 

[240]; 



During the recent steel strike the National Com- 
mittee tried to arrange a joint meeting with the of- 
ficials of the miners and railroad brotherhoods to see 
if some assistance, moral if nothing else, could be 
secured for the steel workers. But nothing came of 
it. In the next big drive, however, these powerful 
organizations should be allied with the steel workers 
and prepared to give them active assistance if neces- 
sary. And in the tuning and timing of movements 
to permit of such a condition, so that no lots, legal 
or contractual, need be cut across, there are involved 
no technical problems which a little initiative and 
far-sightedness on the part of the labor men in con- 
trol could not readily overcome. 

In order to cover up their own inveterate oppo- 
sition to Organized Labor in all its forms and activi- 
ties, and to blind the workers to the real cause of 
the defeat, namely lack of sufficient power on the 
employees' side, great employing interests caused to 
be spread over the whole country the statement 
that the steel strike failed because of radical leader- 
ship, and that if such " dangerous " men as John 
Fitzpatrick and myself had not been connected with 
it everything would have been lovely. They were 
especially severe against me for my " evil " influence 
on the strike. But somehow their propaganda did 
not seem to strike root among labor men, especially 
those who were backing the steel campaign. The 
workers are getting too keen these days to let the 
enemy tell them who shall or shall not be their of- 
ficials ; and when they see one of these officials made 
the target of bitter attack from such notorious in- 
terests as the Steel Trust they are much inclined to 

[241] 



feel that he is probably giving them a square deal. 

As for myself, and I know John Fitzpatrick took 
the same position regarding himself, I was willing to 
resign my position on the National Committee the 
very instant it was indicated by those associated with 
me that my presence was injuring the movement. I 
felt that to be my duty. But to the last, that indi- 
cation never came. When I finally resigned as Sec- 
retary-Treasurer on January 31, it was entirely of 
my own volition. 

The avalanche of vituperation and personal abuse 
was started several months before the strike, when 
a traitor labor paper in Pittsburgh (one of the 
stripe which lives by knifing strikes and active 
unionists for the employers) published articles con- 
taining quotations from the " red book," and the 
other stuff later bruited about in the daily press. To 
hear this sheet tell it, the revolution was at hand. 
Immediately after the articles appeared I sent copies 
to the presidents of all the twenty-four co-operating 
unions, with the result that almost all of these 
officials wrote me, advising that I pay no attention 
to these attacks, but continue with my work. They 
seemed to consider it something of a compliment 
to be so bitterly assailed from such a quarter. 
Again, at the very moment when President Gompers 
was dictating his letter to Judge Gary asking for a 
conference (long after the above-mentioned attacks) 
I stated that possibly too much prominence for me in 
the movement might attract needless opposition to it 
and I offered to resign from the conference commit- 
tee which handled all negotiations concerning the 
steel strike. But my objections were over-ruled and 

[242] 



I was continued on the committee. Moreover, at any 
time in the campaign a word from the executive offi- 
cers of the A. F. of L. would have brought about my 
resignation. This they were aware of for months 
before the strike. All of which indicates that the 
men responsible for the organizations in the move- 
ment were satisfied that it was being carried on ac- 
cording to trade-union principles, and also that in 
consideration of the Steel Trust's murderous tactics 
in the past it was a certainty that if the opposition 
had not taken the specific form it did, it would have 
manifested itself in some other way as bad or worse. 
It was to be depended upon that some means would 
have been found to thoroughly discredit the move- 
ment. 

This conviction was intensified by the unexampled 
fury with which each important move of Labor dur- 
ing the past year has been opposed, not only by 
employers but by governmental officials as well. All 
through the war the moneyed interests watched with 
undisguised alarm and hatred the rapid advance of 
the unions; but they were powerless to stop it. 
Now, however, they are getting their revenge. The 
usual method of defeating such movements during 
this period of white terrorism is to attach some 
stigma to them; to question the legitimacy of their 
aims, and then, when the highly organized and cor- 
rupted press has turned public sentiment against 
them, to crush them by the most unscrupulous means. 
It makes no difference how mild or ordinary the 
movement is, some issue is always found to poison 
public opinion against it. 

The first important body of workers to feel the 

[243] 



weight of this opposition was the railroad shop- 
men. The Railroad Administration having dilly- 
dallied along with their demands for several months, 
these under-paid workers, goaded on by the mount- 
ing cost of living, finally broke into an unauthor- 
ized strike in the early summer of 19 19. This al- 
most destroyed the organizations. Officials who 
ought to know declared that at one time over 200,- 
000 men were out. Naturally the press roundly de- 
nounced them as Bolsheviki. Upon a promise of 
fair treatment they returned to work. When the 
matter finally came to President Wilson for settle- 
ment, he declared that to raise wages would be con- 
trary to the Government's policy of reducing the cost 
of living, and requested that the demands be held 
in abeyance. This statement was a Godsend to all 
the reactionary elements, who used it to break up 
wage movements everywhere. Thus came to grief 
the effort of the shopmen. Up to May, 1920, they 
have secured no relief whatsoever. 

Next came the affair of the Boston police in Sep- 
tember, 19 19. This developed from an effort of 
typically conservative policemen to organize. The 
strike wa*s deliberately forced by the action of State 
politicians, inspired by big business, in cold-bloodedly 
discharging a number of the officers of the new union 
and stubbornly refusing to re-instate them. When 
the inevitable strike occurred they labelled it not 
merely an attempted revolution, but a blow at the 
very foundations of civilization. The press did the 
rest. The strike was buried beneath a deluge o'f 
abuse, misrepresentation and vilification. 

Then came the coal miners in November, 19 19. 

[244] 



During the war this body of men sent fully 60,000 
members to the front in France. They bought un- 
told amounts of liberty bonds and worked faithfully 
to keep the industries in operation. But no sooaer 
did they make demand for some of the freedom 
which they thought they had won in the war than 
they found themselves crowded into a strike, and 
their conservative, old-line, trade-union leaders 
harshly assailed as revolutionists. For instance, 
said Senator Pomerene : * 

Years ago the American spirit was startled because 
a Vanderbilt had said, " The public be damned." But 
Vanderbilt seems to have no patent on the phrase, or if 
he had it is being infringed today by men who have 
as little regard for the public welfare as he himself 
had. There is no difference in kind between him and a 
Foster, who, aided by the extreme Socialist and 
I. W. W. classes of the country, aims to enlist under 
his leadership all the iron and steel workers of a nation 
and to paralyze industry, or a Lewis (President of 
the United Mine Workers of America), who, to 
further his own ambitions, aided as he was by the same 
elements, calls 400,000 men out of the mines and says 
to the public, " Freeze or starve." 

The Government condemned the strike as " un- 
justifiable and unlawful " and invoked against it the 
so-called Lever law. This law, a war measure 
against food and fuel profiteers, was, when up for 
adoption, distinctly stated by its author, Representa- 
tive Lever, and by Attorney General Gregory, as not 
applying to workers striking for better conditions. 2 

1 Quoted from The Coopers' Journal for February, 1920. 

2 For important details, see article entitled " The Broken Pledge," 
by Samuel Gompers, in the American Federationist, January, 1920. 

[245] 



Moreover, since the armistice it had fallen into dis- 
use, — as far as employers were concerned; but upon 
the strength of it the miners' strike was outlawed, 
Federal Judge Anderson issuing an injunction which 
commanded the union officials to rescind the strike 
order and to refuse all moral and financial assist- 
ance to the strikers. Rarely has a labor union found 
itself in so difficult a situation. The only thing that 
saved the miners from a crushing defeat was their 
splendid organization and strategic position in indus- 
try. On November n, after the union officials had 
agreed to rescind the strike order, the Philadelphia 
Public Ledger expressed an opinion widely held when 
it said: 

The truth of the matter is that we all " got in 
wrong " on this coal situation. This is the time to 
say in entire frankness that the Government handled 
the situation with the tact, timeliness and conciliatory 
spirit of a German war governor jack-booting a Bel- 
gium town into docility. 

And now we have the unauthorized strike of the 
Railroad yard and road men; this is clearly an out- 
break of workers exasperated on the one hand by 
a constantly increasing cost of living, and on the 
other by dilatory methods of affording relief. The 
orthodox tactics are being employed to break it. 
The Lever law, disinterred from the legislative 
graveyard to beat the miners, has been galvanized 
into life again and is being used to jail the strike 
leaders. This is not all, however. Probably there 
never was a big strike in this country more spontane- 
ous and unplanned than the one in question. But 

[246] 



that does not worry our Department of Justice; it 
has just announced to a credulous world that the 
whole affair is a highly organized plot to overthrow 
the Government. Within the hour I write this (on 
April 15)1 read in the papers that I have been 
singled out by Attorney-General Palmer as one of 
the strike leaders. Eight-column headlines flare out 
the charge, " PALMER BLAMES FOSTER FOR 
RAIL STRIKE," etc. 1 

To Mr. Palmer's " penny dreadful " plot, the 
local newspapers add lying details of their own. 
The Pittsburgh Leader, for instance, recites in ex- 
tenso how I returned from the West in disguise to 
Pittsburgh several days ago — presumably after a 
trip plotting with Mr. Palmer's wonderful revolu- 
tionaries, who not only can bring whole industries 
to a standstill by a wave of the hand, but can do it 
in such a manner that although many thousands of 
workers are " in the know" the Department of 
Justice never gets to hear about it until the strikes 
have occurred. 

Now the fact is that I have been so busy writing, 
this book that I have hardly stirred from the house 
for weeks. Since the steel strike ended I have not 
been beyond the environs of Pittsburgh. More- 
over, I do not know a solitary one of the men ad- 
vertised as strike leaders, nor has there been any 
communication whatsoever between us. I have not 
attended any strike meetings, nor have I even seen 
a man whom I knew to be a striker. But of course 
such details are irrelevant to the Department of Jus- 
tice and the newspapers. The latter boldly an- 

1 Pittsburgh Post, April 15, 1920. 

[247] 



nounce that it is officially hoped that Mr. Palmer's 
charges will stampede the men back to work. 1 In 
fact that is their aim. These charges are a strike- 
breaking measure, pure and simple, and have no 
necessary relation to truth. 2 

Similar instances might be multiplied to illustrate 
the extreme virulence of the attacks on Labor in 
late struggles — how the press manufactured the 
general strikes in Seattle and Winnipeg into young 
revolutions ; and how even when Mr. Gompers an- 
nounced some time back that the American Federa- 
tion of Labor would continue its customary political 
policy of " rewarding its friends and punishing its 

1 Pittsburgh Chronicle-Telegraphy April 15, 1920. 

2 In connection with this matter I promptly called Mr. Palmer 
a liar, a statement which was widely carried by the press. Our 
would-be tyrant swallowed it. In the situation two courses were 
open to him: If his accusations against me were true, under his 
own interpretation of the Lever law he was duty-bound to arrest 
me; and if they were not true, common justice demanded that he 
admit the incorrectness of the statements he had sent flying through 
the press, attacking me. But he has done neither. And in the 
meantime I have been subjected to a storm of journalistic abuse. 
For example, says the Donora, Pa. Herald of April 16: "Wm. 
Z. Foster seems determined to have that little revolution if he 
has to get out and start one himself. About the best remedy for 
that bird would be one of those oldfashioned hangings." 

One can readily imagine how quickly the wheels of justice would 
have whirled and how speedily the editor would have been clapped 
into jail were such an incitement to murder printed in a labor 
journal. But When the case in point was called to the attention 
of the Pittsburgh officials of the Department of Justice they could 
do nothing about it. Nor could those of the Post Office Depart- 
ment, although the Donora Herald circulates through the mails. 
Similarly the county and state officials could see no cause for 
action. Finally the opportunities for relief sifted down to a 
libel suit. And what chance has a workingman in such a suit 
against a henchman of the Steel Trust in the heart of Pennsylvania's 
black steel district? 

[248] 



enemies," the scheme was denounced in influential 
quarters as an attempt to capture the Government 
and set up a 'dictatorship of the proletariat. But 
enough. The steel strike was a drive straight at the 
heart of industrial autocracy in America; it could 
expect to meet with nothing less than the most des- 
perate and unscrupulous resistance. If the issue 
used against the strike had not been the charge of 
radical leadership, we may rest assured there would 
have been another " just as good." The next move- 
ment will have to win by its own strength, rather than 
by the* vagaries of a newspaper-created public opin- 
ion. 

But a far more pressing problem even than any 
of those touched upon in the foregoing paragraphs 
is the one involved in the attitude of the Amalga- 
mated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers 
toward the steel campaign. This organization 
withdrew from the National Committee immediately 
after the strike was called off, and it has apparently 
abandoned trying, at least for the time being, to or- 
ganize the big steel mills. Thus the whole cam- 
paign is brought to the brink of ruin, because the 
Amalgamated Association has jurisdiction over 
about 50 per cent, of the workers in the mills, in- 
cluding all the strategic steel-making trades, with- 
out whose support the remainder cannot possibly 
win. Unless it can be brought back to the fold, the 
joint movement of the trades in the steel industry 
will almost certainly be broken up, to the great glee 
of Mr. Gary and his associates. 

This action was in logical sequence to the position 
taken through the campaign by several of the Amal- 

[249] 



gamated Association's general officers. From the 
beginning, they considered the movement with pes- 
simism, often with hostility. It received scant co- 
operation from them. As related in Chapter VI, 
they tried to get a settlement with the U. S. Steel 
Corporation right in the teeth of the general move- 
ment ; and their financial support was meagpr, to say 
the least. 1 For a few weeks during the strike move- 
ment, when victory seemed near, they displayed some 
slight enthusiasm; but this soon wore off and they 
adopted a policy of " saving what they could." 
They were exceedingly anxious to call off the strike 
many weeks before its close, and went about the 
country discouraging the men and advising them to 
return to work. And even worse, they attempted 
to make separate settlements with the steel com- 
panies. The following proposed agreement, pre- 
sented to (and refused by) the Bethlehem Steel Cor- 
poration at Sparrows' Point when the strike was not 
yet two months old, tells its own story : 

1 In the report included at the end of Chapter VI, the Amalga- 
mated Association is shown to have enrolled 70,026 members during 
the campaign. But, for the reasons cited, the figure is far too low. 
President Tighe gave a better idea of the number when, testifying 
before the Senate Committee, he said (Hearings, page 353) that the 
secretary had told him " that he had already issued in the neighbor- 
hood of 150,000 dues cards," and could not get them printed fast 
enough. For each man of this army of members, the national head- 
quarters of the Amalgamated Association received two dollars. Yet 
in return the officials in charge, throughout the entire movement, 
gave the National Committee directly only $11,881.81 to work with. 
Of this, $3,881. 81 was for organizing expenses, and $8,000.00 was to 
feed and furnish legal help to the great multitudes of strikers, half 
of whom were members of the Amalgamated Association. What 
strike help was extended in other directions was correspondingly 
scanty. The balance of the funds taken in is still in its treasury. 

[250] 



November 19th, 19 19. 
Agreement entered into between the Bethlehem Steel 
Company of Sparrows' Point, Maryland, and its em- 
ployees, governing wages and conditions in the Sheet and 
Tin mills, and Tin House Department. 

1. It is agreed that the wages and conditions agreed 
upon between the Western Sheet and Tin Plate Manu- 
facturers' Association and the Amalgamated Association 
of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, as agreed upon in the 
Atlantic City Conference, June, 19 19, will be the prices 
and conditions paid to the employees in the above-men- 
tioned departments. 

2. That the company will also agree to the reinstate- 
ment of all their former employees, such as seek employ- 
ment without any discrimination. 

3. The above Agreement to expire June 30th, 1920. 

During the strike the general officers of the Amal- 
gamated Association never tired of telling how sa- 
cred they considered their contracts with the em- 
ployers, and did not hesitate to jeopardize the strike 
by living up to them most strictly. But when it came 
to their obligations to the other trades it was a dif- 
ferent story. They well knew, when they tried 
to make separate settlements with the U. S. Steel and 
Bethlehem Companies, that they were violating sol- 
emn agreements which they had entered into with the 
other trades in the industry, not to speak of funda- 
mental principles of labor solidarity. 

The national officials in question looked with un- 
disguised jealousy upon the growth t'o importance of 
other unions in the industry where their own organi- 
zation had operated alone so long. They lost no 
love on the National Committee. In fact more than 
one of their number seemed to take particular delight 



in placing obstructions in its way. If they wanted 
to see the steel industry organized they certainly 
showed it in a peculiar manner. A goodly share of 
my time — not to speak of that of others — was 
spent plugging the holes which they punched through 
the dike. And apparently they always had the 
hearty support of their fellow officers. It is only 
fair to say, however, that the lesser officials and the 
rank and file of the Amalgamated Association 
strongly favored the National Committee movement 
and gave it their loyal cooperation. 

As a justification for the Amalgamated Associa- 
tion officials' action in quitting the joint campaign, 
word is being sent through the steel industry that 
henceforth that organization will insist upon its 
broad jurisdictional claims and become an industrial 
union in fact, taking into its ranks and protecting 
workers of all classes in the steel industry. But no 
one familiar with the Amalgamated Association will 
take this seriously. It is a dyed-in-the-wool skilled 
workers' union, and has been such ever since its foun- 
dation forty-five years ago. Its specialty is the 
"tonnage men," or skilled iron and steel making and 
rolling trades proper. All its customs, policies and 
instincts are inspired by the interests of this indus- 
trial group. It has never looked after the welfare 
of the mechanical trades and the common laborers, 
even though for the past few years it has claimed 
jurisdiction over them. In its union mills it is the 
regular thing to find only the tonnage men covered 
by the agreements, no efforts whatever being made 
to take care of the other workers. It is true that 
during the recent campaign, due to the stimulus of 

[252I ; 



the National Committee, laborers were taken in; 
but of the way they were handled, probably the less 
said the better. The incidents related in Chapter 
X are typical. 

That the men now at the head of the Amalga- 
mated Association will upset these craft practices 
and revolutionize their organization into a bona fide, 
vigorous industrial union is incredible to those who 
have seen them in action. But even if the miracle 
happened, even if they got rid of their mid-nineteenth 
century ideas and methods, adopted modern princi- 
ples and systems, and put on the sweeping campaign 
necessary to organize the industry, it would not 
solve the problem. The other unions in the steel in- 
dustry are not prepared to yield their trade claims 
to the Amalgamated Association, and any serious 
attempt by that organization to infringe upon them 
would result in a jurisdictional quarrel, so destructive 
as to wreck all hope of organizing the industry for 
an indefinite period. The unions would be so busy 
fighting among themselves that they would have no 
time, energy or ambition to fight the Steel Trust. 

Progress and organization in the steel industry 
are to be achieved not by splitting the ranks and di- 
viding the forces, but by consolidating and extending 
them. The only rational hope in the situation lies in 
a firm federation of all the trades in the industry, 
allied with the miners and railroad men in such 
fashion that they will extend help in case of trouble. 
The steel workers are fast recovering from their de- 
feat. The educational campaign is getting results, 
and the work should be made a permanent institu- 
tion until the industry is organized. For the Amal- 

[253] 



gamated Association to desert the field now is suici- 
dal. It is worse ; it is a crime against the labor move- 
ment. It will break up the campaign and throw the 
steel workers, helpless, upon the mercy of Gary and 
his fellow exploiters. Organized Labor should not 
permit it. The time is past when a few short- 
sighted union officials can block the organization of 
a great industry, 



[254J 



XIV 
IN CONCLUSION 

THE POINT OF VIEW — ARE THE TRADE UNIONS REV- 
OLUTIONARY — CAMOUFLAGE IN SOCIAL WARS — 
RUINOUS DUAL UNIONISM — RADICALS SHOULD 
STRENGTHEN TRADE UNIONS — THE ENGLISH 
RENAISSANCE — TOM MANN'S WORK 

For those progressives who will look upon the steel 
campaign from an evolutionary standpoint — that is 
by a comparison with past experiences — it will stand 
out in its true light as marking a great advance in 
trade-union methods and practices. It is true that 
the unions in the campaign made many mistakes, 
quarreled seriously among themselves, and put forth 
only a fraction of their real strength ; but when one 
considers that they substituted a group of tweny-four 
unions for individual action in other campaigns; 
established a standard initiation fee instead of the 
multitude that existed before; adopted modern 
methods of organizing in place of the antiquated sys- 
tem previously prevailing; organized a joint com- 
missariat, carried on a successful organizing cam- 
paign and waged a great strike together, one must 
admit that a tremendous stride forward has been 
made. The conclusion is bound to be optimistic and 
full of enthusiasm for the future. 

[255] 



But unfortunately there are large bodies of pro- 
gressives who do not judge from the evolutionary 
viewpoint when it comes to trade unionism. These 
range all the way from the mildest liberals and 
friends of Labor to the most extreme I. W. W.'s. 
They form an influential group. Theirs is the ideal- 
istic method; more or less clearly, these elements hold 
in their mind's eye a smooth-running, intelligent, 
imaginary " one big union." This they use as an 
inelastic criterion by which to judge the trade unions. 
And the natural result is that, even in such cases as 
the steel campaign, the unions cut a sorry figure. 
Their weaknesses are unduly emphasized; their pro- 
gressive innovations lose their import and seem 
but make-shift imitations of the real thing. The 
conclusions are necessarily pessimistic. The true 
significance of the epoch-making movement is lost. 
This viewpoint is so general and its consequences so 
far-reaching and detrimental, not only to the steel 
unions but to the whole labor movement, that per- 
haps a discussion of it may not be amiss at this 
point. 

For many years radicals in this country have al- 
most universally maintained that the trade unions are 
fundamentally non-revolutionary; that they have no 
real quarrel with capitalism, but are seeking merely 
to modify its harshness through a policy of mild re- 
form. They have been pictured as lacking both the 
intelligence to want industrial freedom and the cour- 
age to demand it. And so often have these ideas 
been repeated, so slight has been the inquiry into 
their soundness, that they have come to be accepted 
in a large degree by virtually the entire left wing 

[256] 



of the labor movement. To these ideas, more than 
anything else, is due the current idealistic labor pes- 
simism, the unsympathetic attitude toward, and gen- 
eral lack of understanding of, the trade unions. 

Yet their falsity is readily apparent when one takes 
into consideration the real situation. It is an in- 
disputable fact that the trade unions always act upon 
the policy of taking all they can get from their ex- 
ploiters. They even overreach themselves some- 
times, as a thousand lost strikes eloquently testify. 
Their program is directly anti-capitalistic. But let 
me quote from a booklet, written by myself several 
years ago, entitled, " Trade Unionism; The Road 
To Freedom," page 18: 

It is idle to say that the trade unions will rest content 
with anything short of actual emancipation. For they 
are as insatiable as the veriest so-called revolutionary 
unions. In the measure that their strength increases, 
so do their demands. They have sent wages up: 2, 3, 
4> 5> 6, 7, 8 dollars per day, and hours down: 12, 1 1, 
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, per day with all kinds of other concessions 
sandwiched in between. And now they are more rad- 
ical in their demands than ever before in their history. 
Permanently satisfied trade unions under capitalism 
would be the eighth wonder of the world, outrivalling 
in interest the famous hanging gardens of Babylon. 
They would be impossible. With its growing power, 
Organized Labor will go on winning greater and 
greater concessions, regardless of how profound they 
may be. It is purest assumption to state that the trade 
unions would balk at ending the wages system. 

So far as the tendency of their demands is con- 
cerned, there can be no question about that to 

[257] 



anyone who will look at them squarely; the trade 
unions may be depended upon always to check ex- 
ploitation through the wages system as far as their 
power enables them. The big question is whether 
or not they will be able to develop enough power to 
stop this exploitation altogether. As for me, I am 
confident that they will. In every country they are 
constantly adding to and solidifying their ranks; 
building ever more gigantic and militant combina- 
tions and throwing them athwart the exploiter's path. 
It is safe to say that if they cannot finally stop him it 
will be because it does not lie within the realms of 
possibility for the working class to produce a suffi- 
ciently powerful organization. 

Why, then, have these strongly anti-capitalistic 
qualities been so long and generally ignored and the 
trade unions considered merely as palliative bodies? 
In my opinion it is because they, like various other 
aggressive social movements, have more or less in- 
stinctively surrounded themselves with a sort of 
camouflage or protective coloring, designed to dis- 
guise the movement and thus to pacify and disarm 
the opposition. This is the function of such expres- 
sions as, " A fair day's pay for a fair day's work," 
" The interests of Capital and Labor are identical," 
etc. In actual practice little or no attention is paid 
to them. They are for foreign consumption. The 
fact that those who utter them may actually believe 
what they say does not change the situation a particle. 
Most movements are blind to their own goals 
anyway. The important thing is the real trend of 
the movement, which is indisputably as I have stated 
above, on the one hand constantly expanding organ- 

[258] 



ization, and on the other constantly increasing de- 
mands. The trade unions will not become anti- 
capitalistic through the conversion of their members 
to a certain point of view or by the adoption of cer- 
tain preambles; they are that by their very makeup 
and methods. The most that can be done is to 
clarify their aims and intensify their efforts towards 
freedom. 

If the trade unions instinctively throw dust in the 
eyes of their enemies, they do it for an altogether 
worthy purpose, the elevation of the standard of 
well-being for the mass of the people. In the case 
of the capitalist class we see the same principle ap- 
plied to an utterly vicious end. The whole trend of 
the great employing interests is to set up an 
oligarchy of wealthy parasites, neither toiling nor 
spinning, yet for whom the whole body of workers 
would be compelled to labor in degradation and pov- 
erty. And if unopposed, they would not only bring 
about this condition, but in so doing would rob the 
people of every right they have — free speech, free 
press, free assemblage, legislative representation, 
trial by jury, and all the rest. But do they openly 
avow their purpose ? Most assuredly not, for they 
know that powerful though they are they would be 
swept away by a wave of popular opposition. 
Therefore, through their newspapers and innumer- 
able other propaganda agencies, they proceed to 
cover up their nefarious schemes of exploitation and 
oppression with hypocritical cloaks of patriotism, 
religion, benevolence, and the like. Their practice 
is one thing, their preaching something entirely dif- 
ferent. Thus we have Garys and Rockefellers act- 

[259] 



ually enslaving their warkers by the most brutal 
methods and at the same time seeking to convince 
the public that what they are trying to do is to pro- 
tect these workers from union domination, to pre- 
serve to them their sacred right to work for whom- 
ever they please, etc. Men such as these are knifing 
America and doing it in the name of ioo per cent. 
Americanism. They are social camouflages par ex- 
cellence. 

The question may be pertinently asked, why, if 
camouflage is such a potent weapon in social as well 
as military warfare, should the true nature and ten- 
dency of the trade unions be pointed out, thus strip- 
ping the movement of its philosophic protection and 
leaving it bare before its enemies? The answer is 
that the camouflage works both ways; it deceives 
friends as well as enemies. It has thus to a great ex- 
tent cost the unions the support of the whole left 
wing of the* labor movement. Its advantages are 
outweighed by its disadvantages. 

In what I have called the left wing of the move- 
ment there are large and ever-increasing numbers of 
workers and sympathizers who refuse to face the 
prospect of a society forever based upon tre wage 
system. They demand an organization that is mak- 
ing for its abolition and the substitution therefor of 
a system of industrial justice. If they were to look 
sharply, they would see that the; trade-union move- 
ment is traveling faster than any other body toward 
the end they wish to reach. But unfortunately, 
looking sharply is not their method. They habitu- 
ally attach too much importance to surface indica- 
tions and not enough to real results. They go al- 

[260] 



most entirely by preambles and manifestoes. Con- 
sequently, taking the trade-union slogans at their face 
value and finding them altogether unsatisfactory, 
they turn their backs upon the trade-union move- 
ment and give support to the organizations which 
have the sort they want, the I. W. W., the W. I. I. 
U., etc. 

This belief, that the trade unions are inherently 
conservative bodies, is the basis of the strong con- 
viction that they are hopeless and that they must be 
supplanted by a new organization, aiming to abolish 
the wage system. The conception is found in some 
degree or other among virtually all radicals. And 
it has done incalculable harm to the unions. It has 
cost them the support of thousands of militants, of 
the best and most intelligent that the working class 
produces. These might have done a wonderful 
work; but their time and energies have been worse 
than wasted in trying to build up organizations such 
as the I. W. W. When one considers that the life 
of nearly every labor union depends upon the activ- 
ities of a very small fraction of its membership, it 
is clear that this constant drain upon its best blood 
must have seriously hindered the advance of the 
trade-union movement. Many have complained at 
the slow progress it has made; but the marvel is 
rather that it has been able to progress at all. 

This devitalizing drain must be stopped, and the 
great body of progressives and radicals won over to 
a whole-hearted support of the trade unions. I 
consider this one of the most important tasks con- 
fronting the labor movement. But it can be accom- 
plished only by driving home to these elements the 

[261] 



patent facts that the trade unions are making straight 
for the abolition of capitalism and that they are 
going incomparably faster towards this goal than 
any of the much advertized, so-called revolutionary 
unions, in spite of the latter's glittering preambles. 
They must be taught that the weaknesses of the trade 
unions are but the weaknesses of the working class, 
and that as the latter gradually improves in educa- 
tion and experience, the unions will correspondingly 
take on higher forms and clearer aims. You can- 
not have perfect organizations with imperfect 
workers to build upon. In a word, the progressives 
must be won over from the idealistic and Utopian to 
the evolutionary point of view. 

Indeed, it must be granted that insistence upon 
the real goal and tendency of trade unionism will 
provoke the capitalist class into greater opposition 
against the movement. But this will be trebly offset 
by the added support which the unions will get from 
the large numbers of militants who now stand apart 
from them because of lack of understanding. The 
power of even a few such men, proceeding intelli- 
gently along practical lines, is one of the marvels of 
the labor movement. It may be confidently ex- 
pected, therefore, that when the many thousands of 
these, now indifferent or hostile, begin to work to- 
gether, setting up their own press and systematically 
furthering amalgamation and federation projects to 
bring the unions into closer cooperation, initiating 
and prosecuting organizing campaigns, retiring to 
private life such officials as now find themselves at the 
head of the Amalgamated Association, etc., vast 

[262] 



changes for the better are bound to occur in the labor 
movement. 

The trade unions have cost the workers untold ef- 
forts to build, and in the main they seem loath to 
give them up, despite the blandishments of Utopian 
dual unions. Apparently, it is through the old unions 
that the workers will eventually achieve their in- 
dustrial freedom, save, perhaps, in such cases as the 
United Garment Workers, where conditions in the 
organization were so utterly hopeless that there was 
nothing to do but form a new body, the Amalga- 
mated Clothing Workers. But this was an excep- 
tional case. Most of the unions are moving steadily 
onward and upward, and they have an unshakable 
grip upon the workers in their respective spheres. 
This being so, the logical thing to do is systematically 
to set about improving and strengthening them. If 
this is done, then, instead of the wild, desperate, dual- 
istic outbreaks and strikes, which have characterized 
the American labor movement for years, and done 
it incalculable harm, the discontented rank and file 
will find relief through an orderly and rapid progress 
within the folds of the organizations they already 
have. The sooner these facts are recognized the 
better for American Labor. 

During the past few years much has been said 
about the wonderful progress being made by the Eng- 
lish trade-union movement. This, I venture to as- 
sert, is due largely, if not altogether, to the absence 
among the radicals of England of the idealistic, 
dualistic attitude towards the unions which ex- 
ists so widely here, and which has produced the 

[263] 



I. W. W. and its great body of sympathizers. 
The English radicals have a better conception 
than ours of the trade unions ; for, flesh and blood of 
the labor movement, they pit their policies and en- 
ergies against the conservatives, and win. They are 
the ones who are writing the highly-praised pro- 
grams, and driving onward the great wage move- 
ments. They are practical and constructive. Un- 
like so many of our radicals they do not waste their 
time and strength in empty, pessimistic criticism of 
the trade unions, and in vain, foolhardy attempts 
to tear the whole labor structure to pieces and to 
reconstruct it according to the dream of Daniel De 
Leon. 

In England the turning- point came ten years ago 
when she felt the great wave of sentiment for 
revolutionary unionism then sweeping the world. 
The question was whether this movement should 
realize its aims through the old unions or by starting 
new ones. The existing unions were notoriously 
conservative. Several of our leading radicals had 
said they were even more hopeless than our own or- 
ganizations and strongly urged the formation of an 
English I. W. W. But fortunately, Tom Mann and 
his colleagues, with a deeper knowledge of trade 
unionism, were able to forestall this movement and 
to direct the strong stream of progressive thought 
and energy into the old unions. The result was 
magical. Within two years the great and successful 
strikes of the transport workers, railroaders and 
miners had occurred, and the renaissance of the Eng- 
lish labor movement was assured. British working- 
men will never realize the invaluable service which 

[264] 



Tom Mann rendered them in saving England from 
an I. W. W. dual movement, with its tremendous 
waste of power and its weakening effect upon the 
trade unions. 

How long are American progressives going to 
continue deceiving themselves with the words of 
high-sounding preambles? When are they going to 
quit chasing rainbows and settle down to real work? 
These are important considerations indeed. The 
hour when our militants generally adopt English 
methods, and turn their whole-hearted attention to 
building up and developing the trade-union move- 
ment, — that hour will be the dawn of a new day for 
American Labor. 



THE END 



[265] 



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